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MP3.com Countersues RIAA
Nik4 writes "As per this news item on Yahoo, MP3.com has filed a law suit against the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and its president, Hilary Rosen. More details are available here on the MP3.com site. MP3.com is complaining of defamation, trade libel, interference with prospective economic advantage, and unfair business practices.
" At this point, I think it's safe to say that the MP3 will be locked up in court for quite some time - and in the meantime, MP3 will become more and more the standard.
(There is an Open Source MP4 encoder/decoder for Linux, now. The sooner people start taking that seriously, the better.)
However, the RIAA's bid for total domination of the digital market can't hold up to -real- scrutiny. This countersuit may produce questions in the media and the public that the RIAA don't want asked, let alone answered. That can only help free formats and haten the demise of the software patent.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Did you read anything about the suits?
RIAA is upset because mp3.com has a service where if you have a CD in your personal collection, you can "register" it with mp3.com, and then anywhere you go, you can login and listen to the mp3's that correspond with your CD from their servers.
The RIAA is saying they are illegally distributing music that they have no right to this way.
And part of it is probably because of the format and the fact that like you said, many files on mp3.com are by independants that the RIAA can not make any money off of.
Exactly. MP3.com *only* distributes legal mp3s. That's why they are suing for libel (among other things) against the RIAA which makes out *all* mp3 users as 'music pirates'. IANAL, but the RIAA lawsuit seems completely groundless, but is completely typical of large coporations.
What do you do when you can no longer compete? In the old days, your company might go bankrupt. Now, you can just file frivolous lawsuits against the competition.
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auntfloyd
The EFF should look closely at the documents in this case. The DeCSS case is almost exactly the same.
Opening a libel case against the MPAA should be fun. And before anybody says it can't be done, look at the McLibel case. The defendent didn't win, but they cost McDonalds a slew of money, and opened up a lot of information that McDonalds didn't want publicised.
It sure is nice to see a company with some cash fighting against the silly copyright-mongers. But I have a nagging suspicion that Mp3.com is completely non-ideological, or even doesn't "get it" the way Red Hat does.
In other words, MP3.com will one day be using laws and questionable tactics to leverage their name. Does anyone know if I'm right here? Is MP3.com fighting the good fight, or just trying to benefit themselves?
On the one hand, in this case it amounts to the same thing: their economic incentive is pushing them to defend a possibly brighter future from the owners of a dark past. On the other hand, who out there has the MP3 business model which works more like Linux, more like the GPL: value adding services/packaging/quality guarantees around "free" and "open" products?
Where is Open Source music, and who is willing to fight for it?
Take a look at the MPEG-4 Structured Audio: Developer Tools for info on MP-4.
RootPrompt.org -- Nothing but Unix
kayaking
Mp3.com wants this to be a jury trial. That is definitely a good move if they get it. They can play on the David against Goliath idea. Juries tend to favor that position. I think Mp3.com is aiming for a younger jury and the RIAA will want a jury which is as old as possible with a big enough bias against modern technology. I leave it to funnier people then me to come up with some great lines we should hear during the jury selections and the rest of the trial. :-)
It seems that the RIAA has tried to bully some of the investment bankers that MP3.com is doing business with. If they can get it to stick in court and maybe link it to the plummeting of their stock, this would become a great trial. I wish them the best
Use Adsense for Charity
I'm surprised this didn't happen earlier. Probably took awhile to draft the complaint fully.
IANAL, but AFAIK, It is almost routine to launch a countersuit. It helps settlement. And in this case it's more than justified.
There ought to be a backslash. Big Corps, including RIAA, MPAA and BSA and the likes, have been defaming and libelling users with such qualificative as "pirate", "thieves", etc ..
It's time for payback. Whatever the outcome of this lawsuit is, it will bring the attention of the medias to this problem. At least people will start challenging those blatant lies, whereas, up until now, journalist would just copy word by word those insults. When was the last time you read an article in a mainstream journal showing a critical opinion on the "piracy" issue?
The RIAA has been spewing out defamation against anyone who wishes to advance recording technology. Never mind that class lectures, meetings, memorable family events can be more intelligible given a good portable stereo recorder. Anyone that threatens their dinosour business model is branded a pirate like they pillage the recording industry, rape the stars, and are the scourges of society. Granted MP3.com has their agenda too, but the RIAA has no right.
Why? The suit describes several clearly improper actions on the part of the RIAA, such as calling analysts of MP3.com's stock and more or less twisting their arms with nice not-so-subtle things like "what would happen to MP3.com's stock if we sued them?". That sort of thing is only a few slight notches above racketeering on the ethics totem pole, in my humble opinion.
I suspect that there are probably a lot of other fascinating tidbits that will come out of this trial, so I'll certainly be watching closely!
The RIAA went way out of line here. Hilary Rosen calling their securities analysts, and making insinuations about "what could happen to [MP3.com's] stock if they were sued"? Press releases saying that "[MP3's] are akin to walking into a record store and stealing a CD" - even when blatantly targetting (in the release) artists who had not been able to be signed by a contract, whose only real means of distribution *was* mp3.com (and were being paid for it), doing their damndest to try to convince them they were being ripped off.
Assuming, of course, that all of MP3.COM's assertions are true, the RIAA appointed itself judge and jury. There is no way they could justify calling banks and saying "are you sure you want to invest in these guys, who are stealing from us"...
Of course they're defending economic interest. There is money to be made in music. Good luck to them. The RIAA are the ones who want to maintain the monopoly. mp3.com's primary purpose is themselves, sure, but the RIAA is impuning an entire format as being 'purely for illegal purposes'.
Not quite sure about your "get it" comments. They're not open source. Because the music is distributed very cheaply, or in some cases free, I don't think comparing it to Red Hat etc is an apples and apples comparison.
MP3.com isn't the only company pushing MP3s by any means. Lycos, Yahoo, etc all also have big interests in it. (Yes and Napster too - I'm not naming any other mp3 sites, because I don't pay much attention to them).
I think clearing mp3's name will be the biggest benefit to the 'community', but I think they are more than right to go hellbound after an organisation has ripped them to shreds without the merest illusion of fair tactics.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
There are two honest sides to this. On the one hand are the copyright owners who have a legitimate goal of reducing illegal copying at all levels. Unless we want to lobby for the total abolition of copyright on everything, I think that copy protection mechanisms are a legitimate goal.
On the other hand we have the consumer who wants to make fair use of purchased material. In the past both law-makers and courts around the world have been broadly supportive of fair use measures. The Sony vs United Media case is the one I've seen cited in the US, and I believe that similar rulings apply over here. For those unfamiliar with it, the court took the view that copyrights are not an absolute form of property, but a form of regulation designed to increase the production of creative works.
The judge in the DeCSS case made reference to this doctrine, but said that Congress should be given very broad lattitude by the courts in making such laws, since they had both the mandate and the information to make good ones. Hence the DMCA stands.
So I think we have to educate our lawmakers here. Acknowledge copy protection technology as a legitimate means to legitimate ends, but emphasise that these schemes give content produces an unprecedented degree of control over the end use of their products. This degree of control was probably not forseen by the lawmakers who voted for DMCA (I don't comment on those who actually wrote the clauses, or the companies who lobbied for it). Hence technological copy control should only be supported by the law where it permits fair use. We can emphasise this by demonstrating copy protection schemes which permit fair use. We are good at technology: that bit should be easy.
The problem with this is that "fair use" is very hard to pin down. The law surrounding it is complicated and varies between juristictions. This means that any copy protection scheme that tries to decide if a particular copy is legitimate before allowing the copy is not going to work. There is simply no way that a piece of software can make that decision.
The only other approach would seem to be some kind of detection after the fact. For instance, if every copy included a watermark of some kind in the encryption then it would be possible to track down the person who made the copy.
This scheme might be criticised on civil liberty grounds: if the government can track down the person who made a copy of something, they can equally track down the person who said something they don't like. But such a scheme would only apply to the copier of a protected work: anything you create yourself would not be watermarked in this way.
Of course there are a few grey areas. Fair use includes litrary criticism and similar excerpting. So what about a political activist who quotes a copy protected news report in the course of saying something the Government doesn't like? The creator of the copy could be tracked down. But for the vast majority of use I think this has to be the way to go.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
There were noises a while ago about BMG (one of the big 4 record companies, with a record of ruthlessness; people who've had dealings with them often call them the Big Mean German) deciding whom to buy next, now that their acquisition of EMI has been thwarted. One of the options raised was a "lateral move", buying MP3.com.
Could it be that this lawsuit may be just as much calculated to reduce MP3.com's stock price, allowing them to be snapped up more easily? Given that they are the public face of unprotected "pirate" technology such as MP3s, a BMG acquisition would no doubt neutralise this, turning them into another tool of big-4 oligopoly. Beam-It could well go ahead, only with more Orwellian tracking and security, and everything would be phased over to a SDMI-based system that runs only on Windows and gives the middlemen control.
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The old maxim holds here. Any company with publically traded shares has a legal obligation to make as much profit as they're allowed. So all of them will start bad lawsuits given the right situation. We shouldn't support "MP3.com" here; instead we should support "the right to sell music you own in any format", which means that in this case we happen to be on MP3.com's side.
People who hated IBM in the old days often supported MS just because it was the underdog. They're not the underdog any more. MP3.com may not be the underdog one day. We should support their current policy, rather than the company per se.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
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Sounds to me like they'd probably have a case against the RIAA for restraint of trade under the Sherman Act as well. Collectively, the RIAA is acting as a cartel and attempting to prevent competition from outsiders, which is being done "by improper means" (various forms of making intentionally false public statements calculated to harm MP3.Com's business) and "for an improper purpose" (to prevent outsiders from competing with the RIAA members). And there is a possibility of treble damages.
If the RIAA lawsuit is frivolous and/or based on false information in its filings, there could be additional claims -- there is strong precedent for antitrust liability for abusing the legal system for anticompetitive purposes.
Any lawyers care to comment?
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If you own legal MP3s, either those you downloaded that were in the public domain, or those you ripped from CDs you already own... raise your hand.
The RIAA is basically calling all of us pirates and theives... dounds like libel, slander, and defamation of character to me.
Oughta be easy enough, even if the chances are rather low of actually winning, to find a bloodthirsty lawyer looking to get 30% of whatever billions such a huge corperate conglomerate would be penalised.
Or how about attempted restriction of my right to make backup copies in any form I choose, of any media I legitimately own?
Or what about federal prosecution under RICO? Start writing to your congressmen! The RIAA sure seems like it's engaging in racketerring. And it is UNDOUBTEDLY corrupt!!!
Turnabout's fair play, let's give those SOBs some of their own medicine!!!
Oh, and all the same applies to the MPAA as well.
And on a slightly more likely to happen note... Is the EFF involved in this one as well??? Methinks it's about time to join.
john
Imagine all the people...
Linux is not really that small a piece of the pie. Yes, a lot of kids use Windows to download, but kids buy cars and MP3 car players use Linux.
Then, there's the one-upmanship. You upload a whole load of CDs in VQF or MP4 format, put a link to players, and make a note on the page that this is newer, cooler and better than MP3. In no time flat, MP3 will be declared "uncool", for "oldies" and "trash".
A format lasts only as long as its fan club. And its fan club will last only as long as its fans think that they are getting the latest and coolest stuff. Fall short, and you're out.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Impossible! "Clueless" implies lack of clue, or a clue level of 0. Comet staff are anti-clued. That's why you get those large explosions when geeks walk in the store.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The only other approach would seem to be some kind of detection after the fact. For instance, if every copy included a watermark of some kind in the encryption then it would be possible to track down the person who made the copy.
That's technologically infeasable, at least for music. The record producers would have to make 3 million different CDs instead of 3 million copies of the same CD. That would drive the price of CD music up out of reach of a lot of consumers. Furthermore, if the watermarking is somehow coded into the MP3 encoder, then all MP3s that I make are watermarked with the same code, whether they're legal copies, illegal copies, or my own original works. And, if any mp3 encoder is released as Open Source, all the warez puppies will just take out the watermarking code, and have untracable copies. Either CD prices go up, or MP3 encoders go closed-source. Either way, the geeks get screwed and piracy continues.
This scheme might be criticised on civil liberty grounds
There's an understatement. What music I own or listen to is my business and nobody else's. That includes the people who think they still "own" my music after I bought it.
The real problem I see with the DMCA is that (evil software co.) can put a clause in their click-through license that says you can't disclose problems with their software, and it's legally binding. How many security holes do you think (evil software co.) is going to fix if nobody can publish bug reports online? The pointy haired bosses will see bugs posted for (Open Source OS) but none for (evil, closed OS) and assume that (evil, closed OS) is a better system, because it has no bugs.
0 1 - just my two bits
One thing that will almost certainly happen is that this will force the RIAA and MPAA to tone down the rhetoric, which has been truly venomous the last few weeks. Maybe they've felt empowered by a few court wins, or by the bushels of money they sent toward Washington (and the Clinton administration in particular).
This happened to me once with a small business I owned. Things were tough, and I had some preliminary talks with a competitor about selling the business. We couldn't reach a deal, so he called my banker and told him I was trying to liquidate my inventory from under them. It was too small-time to get lawyers involved, but I'll never forget it. One of the sleaziest things I've ever seen. I still get chills when I replay the conversations in my mind.
This case isn't about copyright, it's about reigning in some politcally-connected bullies, and they're long overdue for a good spanking. Or an anti-trust investigation. But don't expect the Clinton folks to lift a finger.
For those of us behind proxies which block the entire mp3.com site, would someone please put up a mirror for these news items? Thanks!
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
I found on the MP3.com site this open letter to Hillary over at RIAA. I must say that I could not have said it better myself.
I really think it is time for us consumers to step up to the plate and let folks know that we are not going to put up with being bullied any more. We have had to endure taxes on recordable media because "we might make a copy of that N*sync album for our friends". What were the actual numbers for people who recorded stuff and gave it away? Something around 10%. So, instead of trying to get people to realize that piracy is wrong, let's just make everybody pay so that The Rolling Stones can make even more money! (And trust me folks, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, etc. are the ones raking in the money over this. Folks like the late Muddy Waters, etc. are getting a paltry sum since the tax is distributed based on record sales.)
Remember also the other things the RIAA wanted to do - wonderful things like making used record stores pay them a tax each time a used CD/LP/tape was sold. Why? To get even more money, of course!
You can't be so young (perhaps you can, but I hope not) to have not observed that lawsuits are especially predominant in tech-related industry. Any technical or scientific advance is time-critical; there's only so long before it's superseded by another.
A lawsuit isn't primarily a means for gaining cash. It's a means to gain delay. Courts recognize that you can't put the genie back in the bottle, so they're extremely willing to grant orders stopping distribution of a new technology.
As such, the amount of extra R&D money that they'd have is totally secondary; what they want is catch-up time. So what if the suit fails or even if the defendant is awarded costs - big deal. Paying for lawsuits, offensive and defensive, is a cost of doing business.
This was true in military-related industry in the 50's, in computer hardware in the 70's when the mainframe race was really heating up, and it's true in software in the 90's and 00's.
This is also why companies try to build patent portfolios. If they are really in the wrong in a lawsuit, they can choose to cross-license patents, with or without a cash payment, to make up the value of the suit. It costs them much less than putting up dollars.
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There is no premature anti-fascism. -Ernest Hemingway
No they're not. The very trial in the subject line got lots of publicity both while it was on, and also after it was complete.
The UK doesn't allow cameras in the courtroom, but in both juristicions unless the judge seals the testimony, then anyone can report on what went on in the court room or walk into the court and listen for themselves.
Opinion is not libel.
For something to be opinion, it does not have to say, "This is opinion." Having such a disclaimer, does help. This was decided in King v. The Boston Globe. (Mas SJC).
To prove libel on a public figure, you have to show:
It looks like libel may be able to be shown in this case.
But one is not be required to litigate something be fully litigated to say that they violated the law, otherwise Clinton would have a filed suit against Paula jones and many others for saying that he had sexually harassed her, prior to a trial decision.
Fight Spammers!
I agree! This has a striking resemblance to the 'coallition' that SUN belongs to. The 'coallition' are the group of companies whining to the DOJ to sue Microsoft because MS is too successfull.
What happend? Was Sun worried that it could no longer compete, so instead of folding, they push lawsuits.
What is even more sad is that AOL (who is also apart of the whining coalltion) is gobbling up all these different companies and becoming a very huge internet/media company, but Janet Reno and her henchmen are so quiet about it. Isn't AOL engaging in uncompetitive practices by now (pending merger approval) controlling a large stake in all media?
I'm glad you brought up this great point, auntfloyd!
I agree that the law needs to take copy control measures into account, with an eye towards defending fair use, rather than the intellectual 'property' of copyright holders. But I think you're mistaken to think that technological measures that really protect against illegal copying while permitting fair use are 'easy'. If you can view it, you can copy it - and this is especially true when you physically control the hardware used to view it.
Here's how I'd like to see the law handle copyright, copy protection, and fair use: If a copyright holder publishes a work in a 'shrinkwrap' form that includes technological measures that deliberately make some fair uses difficult or impossible (i.e. most copy protection schemes), the copyright is rendered null-and-void. So copyright holders can attempt to 'protect' works themselves, or they can ask the government to help them enforce copyright, but they can't do both. Make them face a tradeoff not unlike the trade secret/patent tradeoff. Copyright should not be permitted when the copyright holder attempts to limit the (effective) rights of the buyer further than the law already does, just as patents should not be granted to inventors who are unwilling to disclose how their invention works.
Sorry, I didn't make myself very clear. What I have in mind is that the copy mechanism would embed the watermark. In the case of a mass-produced CD the watermark would be the same for every copy, and would point to Mammoth Music Inc. But if you buy one of these CDs and make a private copy on your home CD burner then the new copy will have a different watermark pointing at you.
On the civil liberties front, this does not require that you register each piece of music in order to be able to play it. However it might require that you register your CD burner. Or the law could subpoena the source of the copy from whoever they caught holding it, and then verify the information by inspecting your equipment.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
I would persume the argument is, you might have the right to listen to the music, but that doesn't give MP3.com the right to distribute it. And they do have a point - radio stations and libraries have to pay for the right to distribute copyright works, even temporarily. It doesn't matter if you have a copy at home or not. The counter argument must surely be that MP3.com is not distributing the music, but simply providing (part of) the conversion process that supplies the end product to your ears.
Now consider if I have a juke box rigged up to a telephone such that I can dial into it and listen to music. Can the RIAA sue the jukebox for distribution?
I think you're right. Truce?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I still can't believe there's so much hype and hooplah surrounding the mp3 audio format. I'm surprised that the RIAA isn't more worried about lossless compression formats. You'd think that formats with no generational sound quality loss, or any loss of information for that matter, would really get some panties in a bunch.
Mark this offtopic if you want, but here's some info I've never seen on Slashdot about a lossless compression format called Shorten.
SoftSound, the developer of the format, sells a Windows encoder/decoder. There are also FREE versions available for Windows, Linux, and Mac. The HOWTO for the format is located here. There's also a great guide located here. Shorten for Mac and Linux is over here.
Anyone interested in the lossless compression of audio should definately give this a look-see.
Unless I'm very much mistaken, MP4 does not compress an audio track like MP3 does. It is not an improved version of MP3. From what I've read on the MP4 Developer Tools Site, MP4 works somewhat like an augmented version of MIDI files (in fact there seems to be legacy support for MIDI).
So you wouldn't be able to convert your CD tracks to MP4.
Quotes:
'MP4-SA is different from standards like the MIDI File Format, because it includes not only the notes to play, but the method for turning notes into sound.'
'If the instrument models use algorithmic synthesis instead of wavetables, an MP4-SA file can describe realistic musical performances without using any audio data -- just score data, mixdown cues, and DSP algorithms. In this case, the MP4-SA file is about the same size as a MIDI File, but is a lossless encoding of the audio heard at mixdown. Just like a WAV file -- but 50 to 1000 times smaller!'
--Luc
Great games
I've said all along that MP3 is interim technology ... it's opening up new markets, but it isn't the end-all, and lossy compression is NOT the future of audiophile music.
.shn files can hold up to about 110 minutes of music on a data CDR! Doing so gives you the more reliable error correction of CDR data vs CD audio, which makes ripping errors a thing of the past.
While the MPAA and MP3.com battle it out to determine the future of music files degraded by lossy compression, those on the cutting edge have moved on.
Check out: www.softsound.com for instance. They have a LOSSLESS compression scheme called "shorten" that can reduce a sound file 2:1.
It isn't 10:1 like MP3, but considering that most people have written off audio data as uncompressable, a 2:1 ratio isn't too shabby.
Audiophiles have quietly switched over to this format for internet music trading. As the internet bandwidth grows, the file size advantage of MP3 will become less important, and lossless compression such as shorten will replace lossy compression schemes, such as MP3, and the current crop of SDMI compression schemes that the recording industry is "betting the farm" on.
Plus, a CDR loaded with
If the recording industry was SMART, they would position MP3 as a "preview", or streaming format, like FM radio and advertise it as a lower quality, more convenient format at a lower price, or even give it away for free. Then they would be in a position to sell their uncompressed tracks at full price as a "premier" product, and interest in MP3s would diminish.
However, the recording industry isn't smart.
Instead, they are positioning their own flavors of inferior lossy compression as their "premier" product. In a year or so, people will realize that there are non-SDMI products that offer SUPERIOR sound quality to the industry "premier" product, and the recording industry will have once again painted themselves into a corner.
- John
Rather than answer your question here, I'll point you to a thread I started on the subject a while ago.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
It's not the same case at all.
DeCSS deals wiht the DMCA.
The mp3.com/beam-it case deals with outright copyright infringement.
I can imagine that too. When mp3.com started doing this, I think they should have renamed to mp3z.com. Maybe they can start a w4r3z server too, where they can store an "offsite backup" of commercial software, downloadable by anyone who can supply the software "key".
Sorry, but this "beaming" idea where mp3.com serves other companies' content was a really, really stupid idea. And I think that once it gets struck down, it will give MP3 overall a bad name. I wish mp3.com had not done this.
Although I agree that in general that's what RIAA/MPAA want to do, in this particular case, it looks to me like they are going after an entity for committing piracy rather than simply making a dual-use tool that could be used for piracy. As much as I hate siding with RIAA, this "beaming" thing looks totally fucked up to me.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Looking around I see: five blank CD-Rom media. Six blank audio cassettes. 12 S-VHS tapes destined for use in a spiffy ADAT. Can anybody give me a figure on exactly how much money I was forced to give to the RIAA for these media alone, none of which is to be used to copy their artists? Also, I am curious- artists use higher quality tapes for master recordings, and in fact the S-VHS is 'required' by my ADAT. Tell me, when I buy more high-quality media, am I taxed _more_ compared to crud tapes, or the same?
Since the RIAA and the MPAA are simply two facets of the same atrocity, we need a term which encompasses both.
Media Whoremongers
Sony Bono is an example of a Media Whore, whose congressional seat was probably purchased by recording industry.
Michael Jackson, in his lame appearance at the Reagan whitehouse lobying for legislation which later passed and took DAT technology out of the hands of the casual consumer as well as added an "unauthorized copying tax" to blank media, is another. (I mention the Reagan whitehouse to underscore that not only the Clinton administration is at fault, but both parties, in both the congress and the white house, have behaved equally reprehensibly in the last several years.)
MGI is an example of a whoremonger, as are Sony, Time-Warner, and so on.
A "Sued by Media Whoremongers" banner would be applicable to MP3 sites, Linux DVD sites, and probably allot of other sites we aren't even aware of, who have quietly shut down for fear of economic ruin.
As a corallary, "Silenced by Media Whoremongers" would be a nice image to display when one is forced to remove their site, presumably with a link to other sites with detailed information on the underlying issues (e.g. LiVid).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
If you own legal MP3s, either those you downloaded that were in the public domain, or those you ripped from CDs you already own... raise your hand.
Ok, now everone who raised their hand, put it down if you've downloaded any copyrighted MP3s for which you don't already own a legal copy or have some other legal right to.
There, that should reduce the class action to a much more reasonable size.
I don't agree with what the RIAA is doing, but I don't think the answer is to be hypocritical about it either. I've downloaded many MP3s for which I didn't own a legal copy. Of course I often bought the CD soon after that if I liked the songs. They don't stay on my HD very long if I don't like them. If I do like them, then I don't have much problem buying the CD (although I still think the prices are insane). Even bought a few from MP3.com from bands that I'd never heard of before visiting the site and listening to some of their MP3s.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
One place patent law has to be modified is making it totally clear that companies have to act in a reasonable time frame from when they first learn of possible violations. Unisys waited like 6 years before they started enforcing LZW. Can anyone guess why? Would GIF have caught on as a standard if a license had been required at the beginning? No way. Would anyone support GIF today if not for the popularity it gained while Unisys conveniently failed to notice the growing popularity of it's patented technology.
--Kevin
Bmajik dun said: just posting all of the personal information on every employee of the RIAA ? If any of them happen to get egged, defecated on, or receive bodily harm, who's really going to be that upset ? Is this moral? Is this legal ?
Most likely immoral, probably illegal, and definitely would open up the party who did it to a MASSIVE lawsuit.
Yes, there is precedent to indicate that "posting all the personal information on every employee of the RIAA" and not caring of the consequences (or, more to the point, hoping they get egged and worse) IS illegal and if someone wanted to sue there is legal precedent to do so.
Specifically, recent court cases involving an anti-abortion page known as the "Nurenberg Files" have set precedent that if one posts personal info with expectation of harm, you CAN be held liable. (The "Nurenberg Files"--as of late on a Dutch server, probably xs4all.nl--lists names and personal info, including addresses, vehicle registration info (like driver's licenses), info on family members, etc. of doctors who provide abortion services. Doctors who are injured have their names greyed out; doctors who are killed end up with slashes through their names. The admin of the site, who is involved in "Christian Militia" groups, claims that this is evidence for a "war crimes tribunal" whenever fundamentalists get sufficient control to start putting doctors on trial for performing abortions; the courts have ruled that the page is in fact a form of terroristic threatening and a court order was obtained to remove the page from Mindspring.)
I dare say that--even if you just meant them to get egged and whatnot--the RIAA would probably use the precedent set with the "Nurenberg Files" pages to get your site shut down and ask for court injunctions and large amounts of civil damages. :P
-Windigo The Feral (NYAR!)
Why is the proxy blocking mp3.com? Is the RIAA leaning on the university?
Excuse my brevity, but... BladeENC does use Fraunhofer IP, but it is the opinion of the BladeENC author that he is not subject to the patent under Swedish law. Details are here, excuse the long page.
I don't have time to look into Xing, but it's my impression that it's a commercial product. How do you know they don't pay a license fee to Fraunhofer?
Again, I'm not saying that Fraunhofer has a moral right to control MP3, and I'm not even sure they have a legal right. But it seems like they have a credible case.
In the words of Babelfish, "These programs are legal usually however not, since royalties exhaust their programmer only rarely to the institute for Fraunhofer."
MSK
The details of how an SDMI player could ever stop playing MP3s is very vague -- how would they ever be able to communicate with and get their "stop working" message to a CD-ROM player? For anything that uses a open interface for storage (ISO CD-ROMs, or Flash RAM that is writable using non-MS/Apple OSes) it's impossible.
The answer could be in watermarking. If they can get inaudible or low-key watermarks in audio which can be detected in the MP3 stream and are difficult to remove, they can surely embed a code in the watermark.
More probably, the magic bullet will be fired when there is a new "signed" audio standard; perhaps an additional copyright/license chunk. Encoders will write the chunk, embedding user info, date/time and the like. After a specified date, the RIAA could require all encoders (and you can bet that anything capable of writing such a chunk won't be open-source) to put in the kill code.
Or they could simply require players to fuse a "no unprotected MP3" switch after a specified date, or after a file with an encoding time after a specified date is loaded. It doesn't have to be transmitted from RIAA Headquarters in realtime.
It'll never happen. I won't buy a device or program that watermarks the files I produce, or if I do, I'll crack it to remove that 'feature'. My computer serves me, only. I refuse to participate in any copy protection schemes.
Ditto for the US Gov's idea of making printers write the serial number on everything they print. I'll buy imported models that don't do that, or disable it, one way or another.
No, but there are a lot fewer magazines and emags than customers in general. It is feasible to sue magazines who publish these articles.
The DMCA is the result of illegal bribes, plain and simple. Ditto with similar laws, like the retroactive copyright length extension. And I say this not just as a user, but as an author.
I'll never shop at Amazon again, nor EToys, nor, now, any corporation who exercises their illegally gained rights from the DMCA.
(You can't just boycott a company while they have an active lawsuit, and stop when they're done, because like EToys recent exercise in judge bribing, they'll simply stop when they achieved what they needed, like kicking etoy off the net during the christmas season. If you boycott them, *never* go back, there are always alternatives.)
Your post makes perfect sense. Copyrights are granted because they're good for society and for the owner of the IP. They protect against mass copying and so make the owner more likely to release their IP for everyone's use.
If that material isn't usable by people, then it shouldn't be granted copyright.
In criminal cases, it's not allowed to report on a few facts which might prejudice the case, for example in a recent trial of a doctor, no-one was allowed to report on his drug abuse in the 1970s, to avoid the jury being prejudiced. This isn't really related to the trial though, it's previous facts. The actual trial can be reported.
In a few cases, the judge may seal something, just like the DeCSS code was sealed.
In short, it's pretty much like the US system, which isn't suprising since they share common roots.