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The current system, in which companies are trying to protect their digital assets through a combination of legislation such as the DMCA, lawsuits such as the ones posted last week, and copy protection systems that prevent fair use have a net negative impact on society that goes far beyond whether you would personally benefit from being able to download N-sync. I personally have not either purchased or copied music from an RIAA member in at least two years, but that doesn't mean that I'm not impacted by societal impact of current policies.

The solution to the current intellectual property problem is simple. The copyright holders should target abusers and prosecute the hell out of them. If people are faced with the prospect of being prosecuted for distributing copyrighted works illegally then the current problems will clear themselves up.

So you don't care about N-Sync... do you want your kid, or your mom, or your brother thrown in jail for a year and fined $500k? Do you really think that taking these people out of circulation will make the US a safer and better place to live? I hardly know anyone who has never gotten a copy of an album taped by a friend, or more commonly these days, a CD-R. These are regular people you are talking about, not the criminal fringe. I am amazed that you would advocate locking them all up over pulling a couple bucks out of your own pocket so that they could do as they please. You'll pay far more in taxes to imprison half the population than you'd ever pay to give them the liberty to share their music.

A very large number of 'indie' labels are RIAA members. Check the list, your favorite indie label is probably on it.

yeah but check out the leadership... which is nearly 100% major label folks, as far as I can read.

Has everyone started spamming (or whatever the telephone equivalent of spamming is) 1-800-BAD-BEAT (the RIAA's hotline to report piracy, http://www.riaa.org/PR_story.cfm?id=629) yet?

Not that it matters,

If you want it to matter, write or email the RIAA (snailmail is better) and tell them of your decision and the reason.

Read the Friggin Articles!!!!!!! The RIAA press release is telling. They are really smoking some hardcore crack! They want to make LANs illegal!?!

These guys made programs which allow you to search a network. The flatlan site seems to be down, but read this FAQ about Phynd. It is a program which indexes the files available on various protocols (like FTP and Windows Shares). The RIAA could even use it to help find copyright violations. Instead they want to punish anyone who makes networking software. If they knew about the internet 20 years ago, it wouldn't exist--except in their offices.

Repeat after me. "The RIAA is doing this for anticompetitive reasons. The RIAA are a bunch of facist pigs. The RIAA are the real thieves. They want to steal the internet and computers away from the public. They want to establish a DRM censorship system where they can block anything they want--especially independent competitors."

The RIAA has posted their official position on their website. It's REALLY confusing!

These morons can't even decide if this is a "centralised server" or a "Napster-like network." They say it operates on a "local area network" (their quotes, not mine) and yet it's a "particularly flagrant way to illegally distribute millions of copyrighted works over the Internet."

Dear RIAA: GET YOUR LIES STRAIGHT BEFORE FORCING THEM UPON US!

No, they don't have to prove that. All they have to do is prove to the judge that the copyright violation was "willful" and the Copyright Act allows for the judge, at his or her discretion, to impose up to $150,000 in statutory, (not compensatory or punitive) damages per infringement.

I'm just curious, but at some point, doesn't it make sense just to leave the damn country for good? I mean at least we can still come and go sort of freely (for now)...why don't we all just go? No country can have power without a reasonably large populace underneath it. Clearly, this one is broken, and there is a lot of resistance to fixing it.

Speaking of which, whatever happened to John's Switch To Canada parody?

http://www.riaa.org/contact.cfm

they'd have to prove that each album he offered caused 120,000 less copies of that album to be sold.

No, they don't have to prove that. All they have to do is prove to the judge that the copyright violation was "willful" and the Copyright Act allows for the judge, at his or her discretion, to impose up to $150,000 in statutory, (not compensatory or punitive) damages per infringement.

> so here we are: it is contributing to such infringement to run a Napster-like network.

Perhaps, but none of the programs the sued operators were running could be described as "Napster-like" (except by the RIAA, but we all know the quality of their logic).

We have: an SMB spider, which reports everything people are sharing on their computers via Windows' file sharing, a frontend to that spider, and Direct Connect, which provides a chatroom with a list of people in the chat, and an interface to download those people's filelists (which are not, it should be noted, stored on the server).

From the RIAA press release: "All of them work much like Napster, centrally indexing and processing search requests for copyrighted works. And they permit users to download any of those works with the single click of a mouse."

Both Windows' file sharing and direct connect allows anyone to share anything, legal or not, copyrighted or not. Napster, on the other hand, was exclusively used to trade MP3s, the majority of which were copyrighted. There are a few non-infringing uses to Napster, independant artists and whatnot. There are substantial non-infringing uses to flatlan & phynd, notably security, in addition to SMB itself, such as sharing drivers, patches, and user's home folders (what's on your network? if you're at a business, I would guess that the majority is not music). Direct Connect also has a significant number of non-infringing uses, as it allows anything to be shared, not just MP3s.

Ahh, nothing like the truth-told-here aura of a "plain and simple" (runner up: "in fact") to hide your argument from logical scrutiny. In fact (huh huh), right-thinking people define "plain" theft as an act that actually deprives someone of the stolen good. Digital piracy is neither plain nor simple because it fails to produce that result. If you don't think that complicates the situation in almost everyone's mind, ask yourself why going down to the Gap and lifting the summer line would get me thrown in jail, while to date there has been no major legislative action aimed at the 30+ million P2P users (99.999% engaging in piracy) in America. Clearly, it's because the issue's not so cut-and-dried as the author wants you to believe. I'm not defending piracy as right--IP protection is crucial to the well-functioning of any advanced society--but nor is it "as wrong" as meatspace theft. Especially if, like me, you're out there pirating music only to separate out the Britney-and-Justin crap from stuff actually worth buying. I don't feel bad about doing this because I delete the latter and buy the former. I ask you, is that wrong? Is that "plain-and-simple stealing"? Bullshit. Spare me the record company party line, I could get it here if I really cared.

Now my four-year old will be getting membership in the RIAA to protect their musical compositions on this thing.

Cool. She can be president. She'll do a much better job than the outgoing one, who only seems to have the mentality of a tempermental 2 year old.

Soko

The MPAA and RIAA are not police forces!

She has succeeded without the RIAA and without ClearChannel.

Don't get me wrong - Ani has done amazing things and I love her, but her label Righteous Babe Records is in the RIAA.

Just making sure our info is straight.

Interestingly, while you may be right (I was a producer/engineer and am still a member of NARAS) the reason each organization was formed was exactly opposite, with RIAA being a technical organization and NARAS a creative one.

Why was NARAS formed?

"In 1957, a visionary group of music professionals and label executives in Los Angeles recognized the need to create an organization that would represent the creative people in the recording arts and sciences.

The founding members of the Recording Academy [NARAS] wanted to recognize and celebrate the artistic achievement of not only talented musicians and singers but also important, behind-the-scenes contributors such as producers and engineers.

Conceived as a way to create a real recording industry community and address some of these concerns, the Recording Academy was born and the GRAMMY Awards process began."

Now, how about the RIAA?

"The RIAA was formed in 1952 to facilitate the technical standardization of records by bringing together engineers from member companies to develop the RIAA curve, a frequency response specification for optimizing the performance of phonographic playback systems."

So, the RIAA was formed as a standards organization which would ensure that competing standards would not be an issue. In 1958, they decided to copy RCA 's "Gold Record" sales award and gave one to Perry Como (I think) for selling something like $50,000 worth of albums.

So, the RIAA was initially a totally technical organization which slowly got into the business of also certifying sales figures with their gold/platinum albums.

Then came Hilary.

RIAA down (again/still...thank bhudda) ----> crapflood....Lucas Arts plans more toys---->flood of crap.

See..only one Kevin Bacon away.

Keep these adhoc submittals coming. ./ shows no hope of ever having logical submission handling, so we're have to send a man to do the job...that's us!

Since this is related to the RIAA, could anyone tell me why their site has been down for like 3 days? That's a long time!

I need to get their email address so I can send them a link to my article on why they're stupid :) It's about how their business model is way out-of-date, and they're approaching this problem from the wrong direction.

They're trying to legislate their way out of the piracy problem, and are attacking their customers in the process. When what they should be doing is developing constructive solutions like setting up a well-designed and complete online music purchase system.

Apparently the U.S. treasury has a legal monoploly on the printing of U.S. federal bank notes. These are the only recognized 'legal tender for all depts public and private' according to the same U.S. government department (read the fine print on any handy dollar bill.)

It would seem, then, that one would not be in the most legal of situtations to be printing and publishing your own tender. That could be seen as violating the 'monoploy on money.'

And we all no how important government backed monopolies are, don't we?

Forgive me, I kind of lost my train of thought about halfway through, but I'm posting this anyway.

I think the whole situation boils down to this: "Sony's electronics side needs to let customers move files around effortlessly, but its entertainment side wants to build in restraints, because it sees every customer as a potential thief." A more successful paradigm would be to see every thief as a potential customer. Let people rip, mix, burn, all they like. If people find value in purchasing something, they will buy it. Basic economics. There is a sense of guilt in getting something for free that is not being offered for free. The primary rationalization for doing so is that one is stealing from thieves; however, if there is value, people will buy it out of a sense of justice. Conversely, if there's no value, people won't buy it. Either way, it doesn't matter if people can get it for free or not, legitimatly or not.

As a real-world example, one of my favorite bands provides all their tracks online (in RealPlayer format) for a slight hassle in banner advertisements. I question how much bandwidth this sucks up on their end, and how the economics of it work out, but because of the tracks provided, I bought my first CD in several years (I watch TV and play video games instead of listen to the radio or CDs, typically). And I can't find Nuclearblast (the label's) name on this list, so no guilt on my end.

Also, I just helped someone out with buzzword bingo in that second paragraph. Oh, well.

"She has harmed her industry beyond repair by"

You assume she mastermined the whole thing. Rosen isn't the evil mastermind here, she's just a patsy/puppet/lackey/middleman/figurehead/etc. to the big RIAA members (Sony, EMI, AOL/TW, etc.). Replacing her isn't going to change any of the policies of the RIAA, just the name and face of the person espousing the ideas.

Earlier this week I decided that I'm going to sell off most of my CD collection (I refuse to own anything publised by a member of the RIAA). This news doesn't change my intentions because it doesn't change theirs.

"Expect more executives to be be forced out as more and more people get tired of their crap, and stop buying CDs."

Yeah, right. What dreamworld do you live in? You can't even organize a Slashdot-wide boycott of the media conglomerates (Stupid evil Jack Valenti. OOOH! LotR!), what makes you think the general public give's a rat's ass?

Boycotting CDs is little more than a personal political statement that ultimately will have little weight beyond your own circle of friends. If you're doing it to "stick it to The Man," not only are you deluding yourself but you're doing it for the wrong reasons.

I should probably post this AC but what the hell.

I'm no fan of Hillary Rosen's tactics as head of the RIAA. But it should be pointed out that she's the head of a lobbying/representative group. She does the bidding of the CEOs whose companies pony up fat wads of cash for the services of the organization that she heads. In a recent Wired article (which will be online tomorrow according to the website) she said that her job is basically to do all the unpopular shit that the record execs want her to do, while shielding them from the criticism. In other words, she's a paper tiger. Her successor will be one as well. She and the RIAA are doing the bidding of the likes of Sony, Vivendi Universal, AOL-TW and all the others. I don't see anyone giving Sean (Pissy) Coombs a hard time about the RIAA's tactics but he's as culpable (as the head of a label that is an RIAA member) as Hillary Rosen is.

If you don't like the shit the RIAA is pulling (and you shouldn't), stop buying music from companies that support the RIAA. Of course, after seeing the list here you'll have quite a hard time finding any music to buy.

BFL

Not anymore. Maybe you don't understand the full impact of this decision, because the judge sure did - a common carrier was just successfully subpoenaed and will be in trouble if they do not, or cannot, comply with a court order regarding the identity of the sender (or receiver).

You can now send a DMCA takedown notice to ANY internet peer within the jurisdiction of the United States of America and enforce it (possibly any peer anywhere if certain jurisdiction games are played).

Oh, wait! We haven't visited the RIAA's website this week! We'd better do it again, in case they think we've forgotten about them!

Note to self: issue vague DMCA takedowns to RIAA's hosts, and THEIR peers.

If they want to either destroy or control the internet for their own ends, and by this time it's clear that's basically the rather silly aim they're actually shooting for, they should feel the full wrath of an Internet Death Penalty.

I hereby encourage anyone who provides service for the RIAA to pull the plug, citing AUP violations. If it's co-located, fry the machine. Vilify hosting these people, and their contractors and subcontractors in the same way that hosting spammers are vilified.

And someone, for God's sake, come up with a GOOD peer-to-peer client that scrambles download locations - no, not Freenet, that's slow as holy fuck by design, but something that people can actually use. Gnunet looks hopeful.. then let's tell them where they can stick their revenues.

Fuck, even Robbie Williams 'gets it' now.

Robbie, if you're out there reading this (and frankly, I rather doubt it) - tell them where they can stick their record deal and go start your own label. You've got the talent, contacts and personality to pull quite a few good artists with you, and the more artists that leave the ranks of the 'old' record companies for more clueful ones, the weaker position the RIAA and IFPI et al will be in, having to find new shit wannabe bands to sucker into signing their souls over in exchange for their face on TV, several grand worth of debt and not a single cent of royalties. Sooner or later, they'll all 'get it', the RIAA labels' last CD will be the Sony Music president on a kazoo which sells 30 copies, all of which were bought by the Sony Music president, and then these fuckwits and their attack shark lawyers will have to crawl down the drains, back where they came from before the only creatures that make lawyers tremble - liquidation consultants - come running.

Fuck 'em. Fuck 'em all. Because hell, they're fucking the artists and us, they've been getting away with it for decades now and, frankly, they deserve kidnapping and locking in a totally black room with no food or water, thirsting to death to the sound of Richard Stallman singing The Free Software Song at 120 decibels. On repeat until their bones bleach. And you know what? I'll laugh at them the whole time, because they never learned that those who fight technology are doomed to be made redundant by it, and because they've been torturing MY ears for the last GODDAMN TWENTY YEARS with unlistenable "pop" crap engineered and promoted to sell, never to actually sound good or mean anything, and it's time for a little fucking PAYBACK!

If they are on one of the following labels then the artist would be affiliated with an RIAA member. The list of members is available here. Good luck finding one who isn't affiliated with one of these labels, and has distribution beyond their local hangout.

The RIAA Membership List lists the record labels that are members. You can use CD Now (part of Amazon now) to look up labels that an artist appears on. Or use Google.

To make your analogy more accurate. The homeless man was going into the restraunt, goosing the waitresses, yelling and throwing stuff until the customers left.

The idea that a commercial entity can incur an actionable loss because of the freedom of speech is a new and dangerous trend in our society right now, but the thought of suing every disruptive customer entering a public establishment is so absurd as to defy logical discourse. Are you trolling?

As individuals, we (Americans) live in a society that legally recognizes our inherent right of free speech. The corollary of that is that you might hear speech of which you disapprove. That is the price of freedom. Do you mean to suggest that a commercial entity is exempt from that cost, at the expense of the freedom of individuals?

If so, I must point out that you are in very poor company.

Have a look at this page and it makes you wonder: Are there actually high school graduates who have a little sense working for the RIAA? Probably one fewer, since this posting disappeared from the RIAA page just a few hours after it was posted. I'd love to see more of this!

Incidentally, popular speculation is that the RIAA website was defaced, in which case. . . well, I'd love to see more of that, too.

Actually, I think it is much more likely that they are trying to keep the filthy stinking RIAA off their backs.

Call the RIAA and tell them what you think about their policies. This article on their web site lists a phone number you can call to inform them about music piracy. *evil grin* 1-800-BADBEAT. Sounds like an appropriate number for the RIAA to me.

Agreed. After all, the RIAA can't even prevent their own web page from getting hacked. Obviously, we are not dealing with the brightest lightbulbs in the box. The effort and amount of work, not to mention sheer skill, in worming an international network without detection does not seem to match the RIAA's skill set.

Hmm...the RIAA webpage is still down. Amusing.
:Peter

See, if such a system existed and was commonly used, why would an artist need to go through the RIAA members to get onto that system. New promotion companies would form, without the need to build an expensive CD pressing plant, to enter new artists onto the system and collect their royalties.

Consider what actual function of the RIAA is. Check out their membership list, if it hasn't been hacked. Dp you really think all those companies own "expensive CD pressiong plants"? The RIAA is a trade association. Its purpose is to promote the interests of the record industry as a whole, not print CDs or promote individual artists. Perhaps you're conflating "RIAA" with "the major labels"? And it's true, in that case, the major labels might find themselves losing sales, but that seems to be happening anyway. Moreover, if some company which engaged in promotion only could be more profitable without pressing CDs, then why wouldn't Sony, BMG et al. simply create a subsidiary that did the same thing, and transfer over their B-list roster? The reason the major labels are so dominant is not merely because they control the distribution chain, but because they have the budgets to do the most marketing, they can give the largest advances to the most promising artists, they can get their records played on the radio. Now I'd say particularly with the latter, you may have a point. The majors have been dying to kill off internet radio because they don't want lesser-label artists to have a means for equal listening exposure.

if you go HERE it would seeem that the RIAA has changed its mind. This article is more likely bogus since the RIAA was hacked again yesterday and can be seen HERE. Its still very funny to read.

You got what you deserved.

Or their own server is shut down :)

http://www.riaa.org/ nuff said.

0wned!!!.

• Browsing of terrorist or dissenting, un-patriotic, or otherwise not wholesome all-american websites.
  
  
• Use of any audio/video compression technology other than lisenced and government approved encoding protocols. No matter if you have no pirate material, If you have the ability and tools, you're dangerous enough!
  
  
• Any expression of dissenting or un-patriotic views or opinions in your messenger histories, message board/newsgroup postings, emails, or slashdot poll votes.

Hmmm, an industry using the court system to keep their unwanted and antiquated business model alive... Sound familiar to anyone?

The RIAA is a cartel of content companies, not a syndicate that serves content creators.

syndicate (sindi-kit) n.: An association of people or firms formed to engage in an enterprise or promote a common interest.

RIAA: (from their website) "The Recording Industry Association of America is the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry. Its mission is to foster a business and legal climate that supports and promotes our members' creative and financial vitality. Its members are the record companies that comprise the most vibrant national music industry in the world. RIAA® members create, manufacture and/or distribute approximately 90% of all legitimate sound recordings produced and sold in the United States."

I don't see how the RIAA is "not a syndicate." Which definition are you using?

No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture,...of a digital audio recording device...or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device.

''digital audio recording device'' is any machine or device of a type commonly distributed to individuals for use by individuals, whether or not included with or as part of some other machine or device, the digital recording function of which is designed or marketed for the primary purpose of, and that is capable of, making a digital audio copied recording for private use . . .

Multipurpose devices, such as a general computer or a CD-ROM drive, are not covered by the AHRA. This means that they are not required to pay royalties or incorporate SCMS protections. It also means, however, that neither manufacturers of the devices, nor the consumers who use them, receive immunity from suit for copyright infringement.

Note: I am not stating the copying is right or wrong, just stating what the law is and what the RIAA interprets the law to be.

http://www.riaa.org/ is back up, but they still have the huge security hole: http://www.riaa.org/admin/index.html.

This post is made for informational purposes only.

http://www.riaa.org/ is back up, but they still have the huge security hole: http://www.riaa.org/admin/index.html.

This post is made for informational purposes only.

This is due to a stupid RIAA webadmin.

http://www.riaa.org/admin/add_press.cfm

http://www.riaa.org/ is back up, but they still have the huge security hole: http://www.riaa.org/admin/index.html.

This post is made for informational purposes only.

http://www.riaa.org/ is back up, but they still have the huge security hole: http://www.riaa.org/admin/index.html.

This post is made for informational purposes only.

Is that this doesn't seem to be a hack on the system (that may exist too). The problem is in bad programming. This link (if it's still there) was the main problem, as it was the tool to post news/press releases, and had no authentication. Direct link and you could control what went on there. There might have been other weakness' but that's the one I heard of. Now the funny part is, just before the site went down, somebody caused it to redirect to the infamous goatse.cx, and as a friend noted. when goatse.cx goes up, the owning is complete

Mod the parent up and go ahead and fsck with the RIAA webpage...

I noticed that someone already deleted the article queue:

http://www.riaa.org/admin/reprint_admin.html

As we speak, someone is changing the news options on the RIAA website. However, they don't seem to be stopping them from doing it. I did grab a shot of a particularly amusing one though.

Oh, and just so everyone knows.

woah!

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