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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.
Take a look at the MPEG-4 Structured Audio: Developer Tools for info on MP-4.
RootPrompt.org -- Nothing but Unix
kayaking
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.
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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?