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The Napster DMCA Defense
kabloie writes: "This Cnet article at Yahoo! sheds light on the defense strategy of
the folks at Napster in their suit with the RIAA, which invokes the service provider provision of the DMCA. The lawyers interviewed say that if Napster wins this one, the RIAA (et al.) will be heading back to the legislative well again . "
Sounds like Congress is open sourcing legislation, but only accepting code from giant corps...
Multi-national corporation perceive freedom as a threat and automatically legislate around it--Me
I'd just like to point out that the Napster team is living the dream of all open source developers. 18 people who threw the music industry on its tail and to some degree, changed the world.
Think of what this means:
- No more multi-billion dollar music businesses
- No more no-talent, over-produced, pre-packaged bubblegum bands like Backstreet Boys and 'N synch.
- Music will be judged on its merit instead of how many studio execs feel like it will sell.
Why should they bother when some 31337 h4X0r
You'll note the word "31337" above. It means "elite". Do you know what "elitist" means? It means that you feel that there is a priviliged class of people and an unprivileged class.
For the next idiot to make the statement that the Backstreet Boys aren't "artists" or "musicians", let me tell you that you fall into the category of "elitist". You are going to tell me that the Backstreet Boys aren't "real musicians" because you don't like them, or resent their success. "Real musicians" are, of course, performers of whatever underrepresented variety of music you happen to like.
I've heard it a million times, and you're dead wrong. The Backsteet Boys, Britney Spears, and whoever else are musicians. They sell albums. I'm sorry if you have a "punk" band in your parent's garage that no one likes, but your resentment of their success is no reason to assault them.
Aftetr all, the only "real programmers" use assembler on NetBSD and C using Linux nitwits just can't handle real programming, right? Explain away, O Slashbots.
Perhaps Napster (or someone) should write and submit an official RFC. Something like, "RFC 6666: Decentralized File Transfer Protocol". Or maybe an addition to the FTP protocol, "RFC 6667: Modification to File Transfer Protocol to Utilize Distributed Server Infrastructure."
"There are two fundemental problems here - but before I start, let me say up front that yes, it's hard to justify to a music artist why their work should be "given away for free". Not impossible, but tough. The case is far easier to describe when applied to software and programmers."
;-)
Especially when they live in a capitalist society, and the construction of their music consumes time.
Especially when Electrical Engineers and Architects make such large amounts of money creating art. And when Mechanical Engineers make such large amounts of money designing automobiles, factory machinery, and robots.
When Chemists make such large amounts of money from discovery that the combination of certain elements can make a better eye-liner.
Yup, pretty hard to convince music artists that they're not entitled to make money, while everyone else is!
"Fundemental problem number one is that there is NO WAY to prevent the copying and distribution of music files (or indeed, of any digitally encoded information). It is an IMPOSSIBLE task to stop it. You can restrict it for a time, you can nail a couple of individuals, you can do anything you like, but ultimately, you're playing whack-a-mole with a whole lot of moles. Any law written to prevent this activity is ultimately unenforcable, and an unenforcable law is an exercise in legal masturbation."
The fundamental problem is that there is NO WAY to prevent people from killing each other. It is an IMPOSSIBLE TASK to stop it. You can restrict it for a time, you can nail a couple of individuals, you can do anything you like, but ultimately, you're playing whack-a-mole with a whole lot of moles. Any law written to prevent this activity is ultimately unenforcable, and an unenforcable law is an exercise in legal masturbation.
"The second, much more important problem, is that art is not a product to be bought and sold. The recording industry has tried very, very hard to make this so, and they've poisoned generations of artists into believing that "art is a product" to help justify the neat little racket they've created, but the concept is flawed and rotten at its core."
Capitalism has made music a product, not the recording industry. The recording industry exists, because music is a product. Musicians exist, in a business sense, because music is a product.
Music is a product, because people can survive by supplying it to an audience whose demand permits this.
Certainly some people can make a living doing other things, but regardless of what RMS thinks, no one wants to be a waiter.
Remove capitalism, and allow a musician to be a musician and survive, and the story is much different. This, though, doesn't apply to just traditional artists.
"Consider this: an artist sits in a recording studio, plays the song, and the song is recorded and mixed into the final cut. The whole writing-recording-editing process took a certain amount of time, and yes, the artist deserves to be compensated for that time. But once the artist has finished the recording, then there is no further cost to the artist - the job, as it were, is complete. If one copy is distributed, or a thousand, or a billion, it doesn't change the amount of work the artist needed to do to make the recording. Why should any artist expect to continue to make money when their job is finished? How is that reasonable?"
Let's just look at the ramifications of your belief.
If a musician can only expect to make money from the initialial recording of their music, and to not only survive, but to make an industry from it, they would need to charge a great deal of money for the initial recording. Either that, or musicians are not entitled to any large degree of wealth. So who is entitled to a non-trivial degree of wealth? Is anyone entitled to it?
Do you think that software companies would be able to pay software engineers $100k/y, if they could only be guranteed to make money off of the initial sale of a single shrink wrapped piece of software?
Perhaps they're not entitled to a comfortable lifestyle, either. Either that, or they'll have to charge large amounts of money for the single original copy of their work to profit. But then no one person could afford their art. So I guess large groups of people would need to contribute $10-$20 each, in order to buy this copy of art, so others may use it.
Oh yeah, that sounds sort of like how it works now, only the groups aren't organized.
"Consider this - I want my house painted, because I want people to look at my house and say "Gee,
what a nice house!". So I pay someone to paint my house. Once paid, the artist moves on. It would
be entirely unreasonable for me to pay the painter a royalty for each time my house was viewed -
the job is done."
I suppose art musuems are also now unable, by your proposal, to do business. Forgetting, entirely, that the purchase of music is an agreement to abide by copyright law. If the painter had said "I will paint your house, but you must pay me $.10 per view", and you agreed, then you'd need to pay them. Of course you don't have to agree, but then again, they don't have to paint your house, either.
Much like you don't need to pay for someone's music, but they also don't have to let you listen to it.
"That ultimately means that the days of bilionaire artists are coming to a close - and that's fine by
me. Are the Backstreet Boys really worth 10,000 high school teachers? 5,000 doctors? I sure don't think so."
It's fine by you, because you're not attempting to make a living as an artist. It's fine by you, because you're unable to see the full ramifications of your selective right
An argument that I'm hearing alot here is that the music industry needs to evolve or die with the new .mp3 dsitribution technology. If they don't adapt to the fact that people can give away their product, they deserve to die out.
My question is this:
Are the people who are saying this the same people who are cheering the court ruling against Microsoft, one of whose supposed biggest sins is crushing a company by giving away a nearly identical product for free?
Just a thought.
the record labels have publishing companies BMI, ASCAP, and so do the artists. each time a song is played on the radio these artists get a small cut, and the record label does as well. im a musician, i create something i make it, its art i dont care what you call it, its how i make a living, you should pay for it. or should your super market become "open source"?
I do. I really do.
People, stop kidding yourself: Napster is a tool that is used exclusively to steal from legitimate artists. Don't give me this crap about how you know "this guy who is a friend of a friend who has a garage band that uses Napster to distribute his music." That sort of hand-waving is nothing more than cheap mental masturbation.
If you use Napster, there is a greater than 99.9% chance that you are a thief.
That doesn't mean that I think the RIAA are the good guys here. They're not. They have consistently opposed reasonable, fair use of music that I bought and have a right to do with what I want. But Napster is not reasonable or fair. They have a legitimate point, and I hope they stick it to Napster and stick it good.
Now I don't know what the RIAA is going to do about all of these "open source" napster clones that have popped up, but the open source community would do well to get a life and realize that they're creating a public relations fiasco for everybody. If you aren't willing to pay for your music, you don't get to listen. Period. Don't like it? Deal with it.
I say sue Builders Square for selling the pipe that killed Mr. Plum.
I've been following the Napster "saga" since its start as shown here on /. a while back, and I've got to say that IMHO Napster is a bad thing. On /. we hear all the time about how "information wants to be free" despite information itself having never said any such thing, and the social consequences of such a naive policy are swept under the carpet and ignored.
Napster is a tool which allows artists to be deprived of the revenue which allows them to make a living. Making a living doing a job is the central point of a capitalist society such as the one we live in, and programs like Napster make a mockery of its principles. Every time you pirate a song using Napster you are directly harming the artist that spend days and weeks lovingly crafting a creative piece of work. Why should they bother when some 31337 h4X0r is just going to pirate it and distribute it across the net?
The DMCA was the response from the beleagured music industry to this new wave of blatent infringement of their, and their artist's, rights to profit from their work. If tools such as Napster and Gnutella hadn't encouraged this kind of rampant piracy then these laws would never have been bought into law in the first place. And now the Napster people are trying to subvert this protection measure to their own ends, without thinking of the consequences again. It doesn't suprise me, but it does sadden me.
When will we as a community learn to consider the consequences of our actions before blindly following someone elses "manifesto"?
How it all works
or Ignoring that Cognitave Dissonance
You may notice a large number of posts made on Slashdot concering Napster, or similar programs such as Gnutella or FreeNet. Often these will be posted under "Your Rights Online" (YRO), in order to show how the use of Napster affects your "rights". You may wonder what the hell programs whose sole purpose is to circumvent copyright laws is doing on a conservative (yes, I mean it) site such as Slashdot.
Let me explain to you. In the back of their minds, most Slashdot readers ("Slashbots") know that they simply don't want to pay for anything which they can get illegally for free. Most people are exactly the same way. Napster et al allows them to get music for free, so they use it. They know that this is copyright violation, which is a bad thing to do. This brings them feelings of guilt which they want to do away with.
How do they do this? They rationalize it away. It's the copyright laws that are wrong, not them. DCMA needs to be rewritten. The MPAA needs to be destroyed. It's an expression of free speech. And those greedy record companies take all the money anyway. Never mind that with pirate mp3s the artist never sees any money anyway. This way, they are sticking it to "the Man", who exists to make life difficult for 31337 Linux users like themselves. Yes, it is flimsy, and yes, it allows them to take the moral high ground by robbing hard-working artists. Yes, many will say that modern popular music is all horrible anyway, and that their favorite music is the only worthwhile type, but then go on to slam others for being "elitist" in any discussion in which Gnome or KDE is mentioned.
And what about the Corel Linux beta? Didn't that violate the GPL by attaching a boilerplate disclaimer saying that only people over 18 years old could download it? And remember the cries of the Slashbots that Corel should be sued, destroyed. boycotted, etc.? All because Corel who was helping out the Linux community mistakenly added a certain clause to their beta, which violated the GPL. As you can see, the "community" is quick to cry foul when the copyrights on their software is violated, even by companies with good intentions. Our copyright good, yours bad.
It's called "hypocrisy" and if you read Slashdot enough, you'll have to get used to it.
Now ask yourself exactly why ther is coverage of Napster on a site obstensibly devoted to Free Software. Napster is proprietary as hell. Those protocol specs had to be reverse engineered. Isn't proprietary software bad? Isn't all free software superior? Isn't "open sourcing" a piece of software the best way to improve it?
These are all bleatings of the party lines. Here, we consider proprietary software Evil until Rob Malda tells us otherwise, or it gets ported to Linux. Then it becomes a special class of proprietary software which somehow becomes better than the rest. Napster is one example. WordPerfect is another. Somehow, they are able to ignore this seemingly large discrepency by claiming that these companies are "helping" the "community". The only one being helped is Andover.Net who gets to sell ads to these people after giving them free publicity on the most popular "Linux" site of them all.
Stop lying to yourselves.
Photocopying something is not plagiarism. Plagiarism is taking someone else's work and attributing it to yourself (for example, reading someone's research paper, and putting the person's ideas in your work, without citation, implying they are your ideas). It is not a form of flattery, but one of the very lowest behaviors by academic standards.
Well, it really said that. This is Slashdot, where stupider things are said in all seriousness every hour ;-)
People, stop kidding yourself: Napster is a tool that is used exclusively to steal from legitimate artists. Don't give me this crap about how you know "this guy who is a friend of a friend who has a garage band that uses Napster to distribute his music." That sort of hand-waving is nothing more than cheap mental masturbation.
Incorrect. Perhaps you use Napster illegally, but many of us use it legally. While some of the legal use is indeed garage bands distributing their music online, this is not the only legal use of Napster. A large number of artists (Pearl Jam and Phish come to mind offhand) allow recordings of their live performances to be freely distributed, and there is a great deal of this going on (legally) on Napster.
Now I don't know what the RIAA is going to do about all of these "open source" napster clones that have popped up, but the open source community would do well to get a life and realize that they're creating a public relations fiasco for everybody. If you aren't willing to pay for your music, you don't get to listen. Period. Don't like it? Deal with it.
You would do well to realize that the software is not going to go away just because you dislike it. If there is a demand for it, it will continue to be developed. And, of course, there will always be people who listen to music they didn't pay for. Period. Don't like it? Deal with it.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I see your point, but your example was a bad one. Software cracks are not illegal generally, unless a license was broken in their creation. Applying the software cracks to illegally use software is what is illegal.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Then pray tell how does an intelligent person get a copy of it?
In general I don't agree with these guys, but in this case I think the answer is: a used bookstore?
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
The fundamental problem is that there is NO WAY to prevent people from killing each other. It is an IMPOSSIBLE TASK to stop it
Unlike the copying of digital data - which consumes no physical matter nor leaves any physical traces - the act of killing someone leaves physical evidence and has a physical cost. Enforcing laws against murder IS possible (in fact, shamefully routine)
Your analogy does not hold.
Music is a product, because people can survive by supplying it to an audience whose demand permits this.
No, the playing of the music is a service the artist provides. That is what consumes the artist's time, and that is what the artist is being paid for. If nobody is willing to pay the artist, up front, for that service (be it a concert or a recording session) then that artist is not in demand. If the artist is not in demand... well, then why should they be considered an artist. I can call myself a "brain surgeon" all I like, but if my services as a brain surgeon are not needed or wanted, then I have to find something else to do.
Note that we have not removed "capitalism" from the equation - we're just paying for what is actually provided: a service.
If a musician can only expect to make money from the initialial recording of their music, and to not only survive, but to make an industry from it, they would need to charge a great deal of money for the initial recording. Either that, or musicians are not entitled to any large degree of wealth.
Yes, and yes, and there is a third option - do more recordings. You know, like a day job?
Do you think that software companies would be able to pay software engineers $100k/y, if they could only be guranteed to make money off of the initial sale of a single shrink wrapped piece of software?
Another broken example - the vast, vast majority of software engineers are not employed in the production of for-sale, shrink-wrapped software. The majority of us work for other industries as "problem solvers". We write code to fix specific business problems. Software engineering is much more like being a doctor, or a plumber, then it is a farmer.
However, let's examine your argument by replacing "software engineer" with "musician" as there are far more software engineers out there than there are decent musicians. Why should a recording company pay a musician money to record music if it's only going to be copied anyway?
It's called "patronage". I like musician X's work. I know that if recording company Y is going to continue to produce CDs of X's music, that Y has to sell enough CDs to cover their overhead and a little profit. So I buy the CD with the explicit knowledge that if people don't buy the CDs, then no more of X's CDs will be produced. In an indirect way, I am compensating X for their time by proxy of Y.
If, however, I decide to provide copies to my friends, then they get to decide if they want to buy the CD or not - and they may not want to - and that's fine. That's the risk that the recording company has to take.
Perhaps the recording company will choose to position itself as a service to the musician instead, where the musician pays the recording company for the use of the studio, the CD press, the distibution, etc. The musician sets the price of the CD, and the recording company sells it. But then the risk is on the musician as to if anyone will choose to buy the CD or not.
But either way, this is a "distributed patronage" system, not the selling of property beyond that of the physical plastic and metal that makes the CD. The bits are just that - bits
Thank God for the Grateful Dead - they showed that exactly this kind of system is entirely workable. They encouraged the wholesale copying and distribution of their material, and yet they made a fine living off it.
The whole concept of "intellectual property" is just soooo broken... there's no "property" there - it's just information. There is no cost to duplication; it's not a zero-sum game. It's not the bits that are scarce, it's the services of the people who can arrange the bits. But any business model that functions via an artificial scarcity of bits is doomed.
Yes, I do fully understand the full ramifications of my beliefs, and frankly, I welcome it.
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
There are two fundemental problems here - but before I start, let me say up front that yes, it's hard to justify to a music artist why their work should be "given away for free". Not impossible, but tough. The case is far easier to describe when applied to software and programmers.
Fundemental problem number one is that there is NO WAY to prevent the copying and distribution of music files (or indeed, of any digitally encoded information). It is an IMPOSSIBLE task to stop it. You can restrict it for a time, you can nail a couple of individuals, you can do anything you like, but ultimately, you're playing whack-a-mole with a whole lot of moles. Any law written to prevent this activity is ultimately unenforcable, and an unenforcable law is an exercise in legal masturbation.
That does not, in of itself, JUSTIFY the behaviour (ie, "they can't stop me so it's OK" is not a valid line of reasoning) but the fact that you cannot stop it MUST be taken into account.
The second, much more important problem, is that art is not a product to be bought and sold. The recording industry has tried very, very hard to make this so, and they've poisoned generations of artists into believing that "art is a product" to help justify the neat little racket they've created, but the concept is flawed and rotten at its core.
Consider this: an artist sits in a recording studio, plays the song, and the song is recorded and mixed into the final cut. The whole writing-recording-editing process took a certain amount of time, and yes, the artist deserves to be compensated for that time. But once the artist has finished the recording, then there is no further cost to the artist - the job, as it were, is complete. If one copy is distributed, or a thousand, or a billion, it doesn't change the amount of work the artist needed to do to make the recording.
Why should any artist expect to continue to make money when their job is finished? How is that reasonable?
Consider this - I want my house painted, because I want people to look at my house and say "Gee, what a nice house!". So I pay someone to paint my house. Once paid, the artist moves on. It would be entirely unreasonable for me to pay the painter a royalty for each time my house was viewed - the job is done.
If I want a really nice paint job, then I hire a really good painter. Because he is so good, he can charge more up front for the job - but this is a service I'm purchasing. I'm not licencing my paint job from him. I compensate him for his time and talent, as is right and correct, but that's it.
Sound farfetched? It's not. Replace "house" with "ceiling" and pretend I live in the Cistene Chapel. Aha! Historical precident!
Record companies have legit costs - studio equipment and land use overhead, printing costs, distribution costs, etc - that they have a right to try and cover. They also have a right to try and make a profit. But the current recording industry is an aberration built on an erroneous assumption - that art is a product. It's not. It's a SERVICE. And if the money they make selling CDs is not enough to cover their overhead or to make enough product when anyone can copy the recording and distribute it at will, then what they have is a **failed business model**, not "theft".
Just because you've been selling ice cubes to Eskimos for years doesn't mean you will be able to continue to do so. And laws designed to prevent Eskimos from scooping up the snow outside because it circimvents your business aren't right either.
Art is not a product. Artists are service providers, not manufacturers. And it's time we stopped treating both of them as such.
That ultimately means that the days of bilionaire artists are coming to a close - and that's fine by me. Are the Backstreet Boys really worth 10,000 high school teachers? 5,000 doctors? I sure don't think so.
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
I consider napster quite useless for the distribution of legal music from unknown artists, so using it as an example for the possibilities to spread such works is IMO a bad idea.
You've made a suggestion that might make Napster better for distributing legal MP3s, but you haven't proven that it's useless for that purpose without the improvements.
I think that the users of Napster are the ones breaking the law, and while I don't have a problem with them doing that since I think the RIAA is doing things that are every bit as bad, and probably worse, the users are the ones that should be ultimately responsible for their actions, not the software that they used in order to break the law.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Do you have some reference to confirm this? From what I've read, the original poster was correct. I'm not at my usual computer right now, so I can't confirm my memory at the moment either, but I think he was right.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
The problem isn't napster. It's people who are using it illegally. What these people are suggesting is like shutting down the Internet because it is widely used to commit copyright infringement. You don't go after the internet, you go after the people who are misusing it.
Now, that said, I don't think that Napster is that much of a drain on the music industry. I WANT to support the artists I like. Otherwise I might not be able to get any new music from them because they can't make any money at it. What I don't like is the current setup that the industry has. They make huge profits and most artists barely make a living (if even that). They jack up the cost of music for consumers, while providing no real benefit for us. If we could get our music from the artists without paying for all the unnecessary overhead, we'd pay a lot less for the music and the artists would get a lot more of the money. That's why I think the RIAA is bad. They are getting in the way of what needs to be done to change the system to benefit both consumers and artists. They're doing this because they realize that the unnecesary middle-men won't be able to leach off of a new system the way they've done with the old. They won't be able to control who gets their music produced and who doesn't. They won't be able to make artists give up their rights to the music they create in return for a chance at making a living as a musician. They realize they might have to make themselves useful for a change.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
If they (RIAA) manage to kill Napster and it's cousins, is Netscape next? After all, Netscape is a powerful tool that all those evil pirates use to browse for and download bootleg songs. FTP is even worse! File Transfer Protocol. We all KNOW what files are being transferred don't we? Of course, sue Unisys for .GIF since that's how the copyrighted album covers are transmitted. Sue Apple for Quicktime. That's nothing but a way to steal music videos after all.
Why not sue IBM for inventing the PC, without which, there would be very little internet piracy? If they thought they could, they would sue God for not striking the pirates down and sending them to Hell.
Makes me want to go download some stuff from mp3.com!
.just ONE revolution of a vinyl groove contains more musical information than a WHOLE CD. Vinyl holds information at a close to molecular level.
I'm not defending the abysmally low sound quality of MP3s, nor am I about to claim that 16bit/44.1 kHz PCM is the the ne plus ultra of sound quality. However, I would like to point out that a great deal of that information in vinyl is not really information at all, but noise. Vinyl producers can't possibly ague that their methods produce precision on a molular level. To do so would require a stylus capable of precision on a molecular level, something that presently does not exist, except, perhaps, in conjunction with scanning tunneling microscopes. And lack of precision results in noise.
You lose, now come up with some real arguments.
No, you lose:
The argument is valid. The real point here is that if you asked people, a majority would say they would copy an MP3 illegally. Yet if you asked the same people if it should be legal for everyone to copy MP3s, a majority would likely say no.That's because, deep down, we all know that the artist gets $0 when we copy an MP3 instead of buying the CD. It's stealing, according to the law, and we shouldn't talk about changing that law until we're ready to deal with the full ramifications. (e.g. Music and books only written for a bounty.)
If you don't believe me, try selling GPL'd code some day. :)- ---------
---------------------------------------------
Large, established businesses have virtually never tried to maximize their profit.
Case in point:
Back when videocassettes were brand new, Paramount Studios sued Sony for a similar reason: people would be able to record stuff and obviously the movie studios would all go out of business. What really happened was that the movie studios now make more money off of tape rentals than they do off of showing films in the theater.
Large businesses have no interest in doing anything at all, they just want to keep making money doing the same thing that they were doing when they started making money. IBM thought of microcomputers as toys - they legitimized it, but their real businesses was in bigger computers. Detroit knew that cars were big and fast and had low gas milage. Japan proved them wrong (though the SUV craze is a return of old, bad habits).
So I wouldn't get your hopes up about the music industry. Force them to cope with Napster and we'll see some innovation. Otherwise if we let them have their way it'll just stagnate.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Ooh, and I've never won any awards before. ;)
/.ers, particularly those who complain about only some copyright holders (e.g. members of the RIAA) and not others (e.g. authors of GPL'ed software) are acting hypocritically.
/.ers acting hypocritically is revealed to have little foundation. Many (obviously not all - I'm not stupid) of the people he's complaining about are not acting hypocritically, they are acting pretty consistantly but to a different set of criteria than the AC claimed.
You _did_ read the post that I was replying to, did you not? The AC's argument is essentially that many
However, I believe that some of these people are acting in a manner consistant with their morals, even if it sometimes conflicts with the law. Thus the questions is raised, 'may laws transcend morality?' and 'do laws need to be in any way related to the morals of the people who are bound by them?'
So in that light, my argument is that there have been many laws which are utterly repugnant to the average person's morals. Slavery is one instance of this. That it was legal does not, to my mind, legitimize it in any way. The law was clearly *wrong*.
I doubt that you'll argue that point.
So his sweeping generalization about
For example, let us suppose that I am involved in a protest at some nuclear power plant. It may appear as though I am protesting the use of nuclear energy in general. However, it is also entirely possible that I am protesting the particular goings-on at this one plant, and that I believe that under different circumstances nuclear power is not offensive at all.
So is it not possible that there are some people who have been unfairly labeled here, who illegally redistribute music associated with companies which they are opposed to, but who do not do the same to companies who's practices they find acceptable.
Obviously this is not an excuse for breaking the law. But it is a defense against attacks such as the AC made. However when there is widespread disregard for the law, it is time to closely examine why this is so, and if the intent of the law, and the uses of it are worthwhile in the end.
For instance, there have been attacks made on first amendment rights (in fact, copyright laws infringe on the first amendment - you do not have the freedom to reproduce copyrighted material) for a very long time. But the extreme importance of the rights guaranteed by that amendment are frequently deemed more important. Sometimes there are exceptions - copyrights, libel, what can be said in particular venues - but typically the courts lean towards permissiveness because of the importance of those freedoms.
Clearly it does not hurt to closely examine why people wish to break the law, and whether or not the law is still justified in light of that. Sometimes it will be, and sometimes it won't.
But it's important to note that I am broadly trying to discuss the relations between laws and morals, more than I wish to discuss any particular conflict between them. (and that IANAL, but I play one on TV)
Now, getting over to the copyright law issue, I disagree that I'm a moron. There are no actual copyright laws in the Constitution. What _is_ in the constitution is the foundation for copyright law, which I do not have any significant problems with.
What the constitution says (Article I, Section 8, Clause 8) is: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
The gist of current copyright law is that any author has the copyright on their work for their entire lifetime, plus another 70 years after they die. And there has been a trend for large copyright-holding concerns to periodically extend the length of time that a copyright exists retroactively so that in effect copyrights are no longer of limited length. That is unconstitutional, imho. It's as though Congress did not infringe on the freedom of speech, but did require that you get a revokable license in order to be able to exercise that freedom in any reasonable way.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Really this depends on your definition of "Service Provider".
Literally, "Service Provider" would mean "One who provides a service".
In this definition, I can see Napster as being a "Service Provider" as they _provide_ a _service_ by which many users can exchange mp3 files with one another.
ICQ _provides_ a similar _service_ by which users can send messages, chat, and transfer files to/from each other.
Neither Napster, nor ICQ do any sort of censoring on what files may or may not be transferred. They simply provide a means by which to transfer files, much like the US Post Office provides a means to transfer packages from one address to another. The US Post Office is not responsible to check each and every package to make sure that it doesn't contain "stolen" information. Neither should ICQ or Napster be required to do such checking.
This is what the provision in the DMCA allows.
Of course, according to the laywers in the article, the DMCA was never meant to protect small, non-lobbying, non-multi-billion-dollar service providers -- evidently only the megacorps deserve to use the laws of this country as they were written.
>I think you're cutting hairs with a big pair of
;) )
>shears
LOL - I never claimed I didn't bring out the industrial strength weedwhacker (to heck with the shears, I want POWER!
>Napster *does* censor the types of files you
>sent (namely, you can only send MP3s.)
Good point - but I wouldn't call it censorship per se - they don't check what sort of mp3s you're sharing - they DO get a list, that gets merged into the DB of the node you're on, which makes searching a bit quicker. I suppose you could say that "access" ISPs also get a "list" in the form of server logfiles. They're just as easily searchable, if you can get to them. Napster just makes it easy for ANYONE to search their DB.
>Napster can claim it is being hands-off on what
>people sent back and forth all it wants, it does
>aid said transfers.
It allows you to search the DB of shared files. That's part of the beauty of Napster - it lets you run a fine-toothed comb over the big mess 'o shared junk they have. In a way, so do newsgroup search engines, such as Deja and the like. Napster would be a LOT tougher to use if you couldn't search.
>Napster *does scan* peoples hard drives (for
>MP3s that are uploadable).
Hmm...last time I checked, it only scanned user-defined directories - in other words you have to tell Napster where to look before it will do a scan. Point it at an empty directory, and you'll share nothing, even though you could potentially have gigabytes of MP3s laying around on your HDD.
>>(An aside, what prevents me from encoding a
>binary into text, like BinHex or Stuffit etc.),
>putting a MP3 wrapper on it, and sticking it
>into my library for upload?
Nothing at all. I've actually done something similar to this as a test - and it worked beautifully - of course, the person on the receiving end has to know how to strip the file and decode it in order for it to be useful. Gnutella definitely has an advantage here in that they're allowing ANY type of file to be shared - so you don't have to go through all that hassle in order to share non-mp3 files.
I guess the main point is that services like ICQ, Napster, Gnutella and such _are_ service providers - they're not "access" ISPs, but by literal terms, they ARE ISPs of a sort. I do agree with you that the term ISP is VERY vague though.
rOD.
--
Rod Begbie done this, and he's not
Yes, they make mass copyright infringement even easier!
There aren't a lot of artists earning a living from concerts now. They seem to be used mostly to promote sales of recorded music. Why do you think concerts are suddenly going to become really profitable?
So how exactly do we pick out the few good artists from the 90% (no, more like 99%) crap?
What if they don't actually want the hassle of dealing with fans? Have you ever thought that middle-men might not be wholly evil?
Brazil, Braaaaaaaaaaaaziiilll ...
So if Napster is like the Nazis because they (Napster) helped illegally copy a few millions MP3, I guess a lot of people here are as bad as Jeffrey Dahmer because they have a dozen mp3z?
You're fucking ridiculous. No, worse than that: you're intolerably stupid and pompous. Your political correctness makes me sick.
In the end, there's just one bottom line: lots of nice people have "illegal" mp3z, while the RIAA is a bunch of rich bastards driving ferraris. Choose your camp carefully.
If it's "doing well at MP3.com" then why not just download it from MP3.com? Why bother using Napster, when the original source is free, and contains more info, and more tracks?
(to generalise, replace MP3.com with respective free (as in beer) source)
Reading between the lines...
San Francisco intellectual property attorney Neil Smith of Limbach & Limbach acknowledges the law is ambiguous but said he believes Congress intended it to protect (multi-billion-dollar) Net access providers like America Online, AT&T WorldNet and MCI Worldcom (who have paid lobbyists millions), definitely not companies like Napster (who are tiny little startups which can be effectively controlled).
Bah.
---
Copyright infringement is a crime with a victim: the copyright holder. I agree that distributing copyrighted music without permission is a crime and must be stopped. However, Napster has legitimate uses so it must be spared. Consider Napster to be just like any other directory service.
"The DMCA was never intended for companies like Napster."
So remember kids, the laws are written for the protection of big business, not for the people or small business.
Don't forget to boycott big music labels and movie studios.
-jwb
On the subject of Napster, you are wrong again. Napster is a peer-to-peer file transfer tool, with a centralized directory service. You may be using it to commit crime, but I am not. Please don't project your own moral shortcomings on the rest of us.
-jwb
what does the RIAA get out of stopping Napster? People have always been copying tapes, taping shows (in fact most bands that allow taping at their concerts fair better in ticket sales -- ie. Grateful Dead).
The free sharing of music is the best way IMHO. Kinda like Linux... It is gaining popularity (partly for stability, partly for cost) and it is starting to become a *small* competitor to Windows (same thing would happen w/music, look at DMB or Deadheads)
Just my
I'd really like to see your response to this: For many years people have been taping (analog streaming medium) radio for the express purpose of playing it back later. This has been accepted as a perfectly fine behaviour as long as you did not 'rebroadcast' the tape. This was to protect the radio stations' intellectual property. When I taped radio programs, I listened to them for private use only. Occasionally I'd lend a copy to a friend and let them copy it.
Explain to me how downloading MP3's of songs I hear on the radio is any different than recording the radio with a tape deck (remember, the analog streaming medium) and playing it back later?
It's not.
It's the same argument you make about ripping your CD with the Rio software and playing it back on your Rio; space shifting your music.
So if I download Sugar Ray's 'Fly' and play it back on my computer, how is that any less legal than taping a really good broadcast of 'Fly' on my local radio station, and playing THAT back?
It's not. They're both lossy forms of audio playback and recording.
This weekend I bought 3 new CD's, at the total sum of $60 bucks, because I like 6 songs.
I PAID $10 a song to own a non-exlcusive, non-reproducable, license per a song. It really pisses me off that I HAVE to go to Sam Goody to buy Sugar Ray's 14:59, Offspring's Americana, and Incubus' debut album, because I owned the MP3's for a long time, and I listend to them.
Bottom line: I have 25GB of MP3's, and I listen to 4GB worth. Just because I have 21GB of stuff I don't listen to, doesn't mean I should pay for it (Wesley Willis is DEFINITELY not in my playlist, but it's hogging space).
I buy CD's of MP3's I like, for 3 reasons: I feel a moral obligation to own the plastic. I want to rip the 112Kbps crap at 160Kbps and replace the crap. I haven't finished building my car/home MP3 player (the 40x4 Matrix Orbital is on the way).
So get off your horse. There's a lot of shit MP3's out there. They are all lossy. Most are 128Kbps. Many are 112Kbps. Shitty quality MP3's are a fact of life. I buy the CD to rip at higher quality.
I won't pay for MP3's I have, but don't listen to. I don't listen to the wichy-wu stations, so why should I pay for their crap programming by listening to their commercials?
Pay-per-orgasm is broadcast into every home in my community. It's available, but I don't buy it, because I don't want to; it's crap. I pay for good channels like Speedvision (YEAH!).
Stick that in your sanctimonious pipe and smoke it.
My friend distributed his new album on Napster, so that my girlfriend could download it for me, put it on a zip disk and mail it to me in China. This technology is easy for anyone to use and will allow artists to get out their new music. As for paying for it, my friend gave the album away, why do you insist he press it on a CD and charge people?
Stuart Eichert
Stuart Eichert
Well sir, I guess I should sue you then under libel law for implying that I am a thief.
So far, I've found it an easy way to get the songs I have on CD to my laptop whenever I feel like listening to one. It beats running Grip and an MP3 encoder (if you have cable Internet), especially if you change the 'working set' of songs on your laptop frequently.
Sure, there may be a lot of people using it for illegal purposes. But that's not the issue. The issue is way more fundamental. You shouldn't be allowed to throw a nuke on a city because there are a lot of mosquitos, even if there are more mosquitos than people in a city. That's what we call rule of law, instead of "he who has most power wins". And the latter is exactly what the recording industry is trying, even shamelessly blurting out that they will change that law because they may have made a slight mistake the last time they subverted the democratic process.
That's the important issue here, and not what conservative "common sense" may say about it.
EJB
I don't completely agree with it, but it's very sensible, and it's a viewpoint not often enough expressed around h ere.
I second your point, but there is still a problem: what about the music that noone want to sell to me? For example, foreign countries' music, or old music I can't get nowhere no matter the price offered.
I know people who have over 100 CDs full of MP3. It's almost all (C) material, but material that YOU CAN'T BUY EVEN IF YOU'RE WILLING TO SPEND THE MONEY: nobody sell that stuff nowadays.
It IS theft of IP, but not "money stolen from artists and majors", since they do not care to sell old music pieces.
The solution: majors and or artists should start selling 'oldies' using the net. They get money, I get the music, and I have the option to listen to something I like without being a thief, that at least to me, is a really important thing.
Ciao, Rob!
AniToolBox! An Open Source animation program!
You obviously are not aware of the greater issues at stake here. In your arguement, you appear to believe that both the RIAA are "not the good guys" and that Napster users are theives, to say nothing of your opinion of the company itself. You begin by saying:
Napster is a tool that is used exclusively to steal from legitimate artists.
The important point is that stealing from legitimate artists is not the only use of Napster. Napster is merely a program that uses a database and protocol to allow individuals to share files across the internet. It happens to be designed for the sharing of a particular file format, but as witnessed by the "Wrapster" hack, the files you share need not be exclusively music files. You can't hold the Napster company responsible for the actions of it's users, no matter how large of a percent of those users are using the software for illegitimate purposes. To do so would be to take away a freedom from any current legitimate users, as well as any potential future users. Period.
Your Brain + EEG + LEGO Robots = Brainstorms
So do I.
Just not this time OK?
If Napster will use DMCA successfully in its defence DMCA will go down in flames. And this is a valid reason to put champagne on ice!!!
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Your argument is baseless because you are starting from the contrived assumption that when I make a digital copy of something, that constitutes stealing.
You throw around strong words like "stealing" and "theft" but what is theft? Is making a digital copy of something theft?
If I invite you to my home to listen to one of my CD's, are you a thief? Whose goods have been stolen? Who is now missing something they once had?
If I lend you my album to listen to, and after giving it back to me you still remember the song, are you a thief? (repeat above questions)
If you made a digital copy of said album before giving it back to me, but (hypothetically) only listen to it when I am not listening to mine, are you a thief?
If you decide you want to listen to it whenever you want, are you a thief?
Where do you cross the line between listening to what's playing in my home, and becoming a THIEF?
________________________________
Excellent summary. I wish I had moderator points!
If your corporation's business model stops being profitable in the face of new technology, it should NOT be the government's job to squash the technology in order to give your corporation a helping hand.
Unprofitable business models should follow the laws of nature: adapt or become extinct.
________________________________
*Oh*, you mean the file exchange/chat client software is the service? Does that make ICQ a service provider?
Yes.
How about AOL IM?
Yes.
Hey, I can post messages on slashdot. Are they a service provider too?
Yes. You made teriffic arguments for Napster's side, you know. Neither ICQ, AIM, nor Slashdot are responsible for the content provided by individual users. They are basically common carriers.
Internet Service Provider != Bank of modems that allow you to connect to the internet.
________________________________
Your point is taken, however I would argue that whereas it is pretty simple to determine what constitutes "harmed" (a victim undergoing some kind of monitary or physical loss), determining what is "wrong" is much more difficult :) I guess that is what the law and the will of the government/people is for. Either way, this will be an interesting case.
________________________________
It's not the government's job to outlaw guns or bats--just the individuals who happen to be using them illegaly.
________________________________
Wouldn't you STILL be using a program? Everyone HAS to use a tool to get MP3's (legally or not). Sure, your news program might have other uses than getting MP3's, but once the MPAA and RIAA find out how you can get terrorist propoganda, bomb making instructions and porn from it, they'll want to shut them down and corner the market.
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
I don't need a program searching for mp3's
Then I hope you aren't using a search engine, FTP, web browser, or other program. I guess you suit up with safari equipment and go outside and hunt them the old fasioned way?
plus I wouldn't want people accessing my files on my computer.
Both Napster and Gnutella allow you to prevent anyone from seeing or DLing your files. Maybe you should TRY these apps before you start comenting on wether they are worthwhile or not.
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
If you have something and I take it, you therefore don't have it anymore, that can be construed as theft. If you have something, and I copy it, you still have the original, I have stolen nothing.
Artists get what 50-60 cents per CD sold? That's before taxes, before legal fees, before management gets it's cut, and before promotional fees are deducted. Where does the rest of that money go? To the record company. To the lawyers. To the lobbyists. If you really want to help the artists, send a dollar directly to them.
Well, the Supremes tend to be smart people (Thomas excluded) so they said that it's all fine.
Why the dig at Justice Thomas? Do you not like black people? Conservative people? Or is it just black conservative people who get your goat?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I can't help how I'm moderated - post early & post often :)
The whole point of the article was that the DMCA protects online service providers as "common carriers" from prosecution for copyright violation, as long as they take proper action once they are informed of the violation. Yes, usually the DMCA is used by content creators and publishers to protect their creations. In this case, however, we are talking about a different provision of the DMCA which may act against content creators and publishers in this case. The comment from the article which I was complaining about was from a lawyer who was unhappy that the law applied both ways, and wanted to rewrite it to the exclusive gain of the recording industry.
Of course, there is the question as to whether Napster really qualifies as a common carrier - depending on the outcome of the court case, this could probably go either way. So Napster may or may not be be protected. But that will be determined as a result of the court battle and is not currently a cut-and-dried issue as you seem to think.
Hmmm. Which of us actually read the article all the way through and can thoughtfully explain the issues involved (although IANAL), and which of us is just name-calling?
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Translation: if someone else uses our law, we'll change it so they can't. Laws are only for the use of our large, moneyed conglomerate and should never end up helping the little guy.
I wish there was a legal fund one could contribute to that would be guaranteed to finance a challenge to the constitutionality of the DMCA. Rather than supporting a bunch of different legal battles at once or supporting different advocacy groups (although groups like the EFF fill an essential purpose, don't get me wrong), it would be more efficient to have one case go "all the way".
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Because it's still pretty close to CD quality, especially if your audio equipment isn't all that great. It's good enough for many people.
So let's say you want to store your music collection on a hard disk, for user interface purposes. (You have to admit, that pointing and clicking is a hell of a lot easier than playing "find the CD in the pile.") In my case, I can fit my music collection in 80 Gigabytes, if I encode it as 256kbps MP3s. It would take 400 Gigabytes if I stored it as CDDA/WAV/etc. 80 Gigabytes isn't too hard to come up with. 400 is a lot harder.
Time will fix this problem, and some day I will buy a 1 Terabyte disk for $300. Until then, though, compression is my friend.
Oh, and another thing that makes MP3 great is precisely that they are not as good as CDDA or Vinyl. Encode a song at 64kbps and you get a really tiny file compared to the CDDA data. The resulting file isn't something you would want to listen to day after day, but it's great if all you want to do is evaluate whether you happen to like the song or not. Musicians have made a lot of money off me, thanks to this principle.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Software cracks are not illegal generally
A couple years ago this was true. But under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) they are now illegal in the United States. Hell, I think even MS-DOS may be illegal under the DMCA, because it includes DEBUG.COM which can be used to circumvent copyright-enforcement technology.
The DMCA is evil. I don't really care whether Napster wins, but I want the DMCA to lose. It's unConstitutional and immoral.
*Oh*, you mean the file exchange/chat client software is the service? Does that make ICQ a service provider? How about AOL IM? Hey, I can post messages on slashdot. Are they a service provider too?
Internet software company != ISP necessarily.
George Lee
>things like "Copyright" by trying to eliminate
>peoples ability to copy without authorization.
Whoa bucky, slow down there. Are you saying Copyrights are unenforcable, or that you'd like them to be unenforcable? Copyrights have been around for books, music, software, etc. for a while now.
Are you saying authors/artists/programmers have no right to protect their work from other people who would rip it off to make a quick buck?
George Lee
George Lee
I am saying that they ARE unenforcable. The most that can be done is a few people be caught now and again, only the biggest "offenders". When someone copies a work, no dead body is left. Nothing that would tip someone off to the fact that it has happened. It is impossible to stop unauthorized copying now that everyone and their brother has the ability to do it. (back when only a small number of people had ready access to the technology needed, then copyright was enforcable)
Ah, okay, you mean unenforceable, as in "You can't enforce copyrights for every violation." I was talking about the right to enforce. I agree with you here. The holder of the copyright has the responsiblity to enforce it. This doesn't mean they lose the copyright if they can't catch every instance of its violation. Catching the "big offenders" can, in fact, help them coupe any "losses" they suffered on a whole. Of course, this is why RIAA is all over Napster's ass. Is Napster a fair target? That's for the courts to decide, I guess.
Claiming the rights of the authors or artists seems a little backwards. What you are advocating is the right of an author to dictate the actions of other people. This is, in essence, my problem with "Intellectual property" claims. it is claiming the rights to something which exists entirely in someone elses posession and on someone elses equipment.
That is *exactly* what I'm advocating. That is what a copyright is all about, protecting intellectual property. If I wrote a book, I don't want to see someone else publishing that book under their name, or standing on the street corner handling out free copies *without* my permission. Same would go if I recorded a CD. And if *definately* goes with software I write.
Please don't take this question as a personal attack, but I'm wondering if you're a programmer or writer or musican etc, and, if you are, I'm wondering what your views are about use of your own work.
Rememeber, the original intent of copyright was to make producing works profitable to authors so that they would make works, in a time when most authors did not have the ability to publish on their own and thus to encourage them to publish, offered them a way to make sure that the publisher pays them.
Today, the means needed for publishing is available to any author. The technology for publishing is available to most any author. I do not believe that we need, any longer, to cede our rights to copy to the authors (which is what copyright technically is) to encourage the production of works.
What technology? The Internet? Sorry, ain't going to fly right now. Stephen King just release on of the first "eBooks", and only because he's very famous and *very* rich (he can afford a lost.) Can you *honestly* say there are more people who would *buy* a eBook than buy a hardcopy?
Is this bad for some buisnesses? Only if they are unwilling to adapt. Change happens. It will happen no matter how much the RIAA and others kick and scream about it. Survivors adapt and move on. Its called progress.
No, it's called justification for not putting down some coin. So you're basically saying "Pirating is going to happen anyway, so people in the entertainment business should stop expect profits from published materal." What a load of hooey. Musicans are at least able to tour and preform. What's a author to do? *Read* his book at people? You end up with no books, no recorded music, no movies, no media because there's no longer any profit from it. That's not the type of "revolution" I had in mind.
George Lee
Therefore it is not open source and will contine to be closed source until the source is released. Only then will it be open source.
It can't be open source without its code released.
Come on guys, is that any way to talk about Hilary Rosen? You don't have to like her, but this is just a bit much! ;-}
Eric
Hmmm. 'Right' is too strong a word... but I can use other people's work, if I own it. I can store it. I can copy it. I can back it up. I can burn it. I can 'give' it to someone else(not a copy, but the item)
The issue isn't the right to copy other people's work. What do you think the music industry does with every CD run? Making millions of copies! It's when and how making the copy is legal or not.
So if the artist is compensated in a fair way, to the artist's satisfaction, I don't see the problem of copying their work; and if they aren't satisfied, it's easy enough to just stop producing stuff for others to be copying.
A bigger issue is that the distribution method has changed/will change from Big Corporation and centralized marketing, production, processing, and advertisement, to a decentralized, word of mouth, speed of net, viral method. Now payment has to catch up, else all the artists will die, starve, or change jobs to make web pages.
I'm not particularly impressed with the need by the Big Corporations to survive. It's their job, not their right, to go with change and stuff.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Interesting. We were at a studio yesterday, shopping for a place to do some demo recording, and this is (in effect) what we heard from the studio. That a few bands recording demos there have been "doing well at MP3.com", which in turn trickles into the napster networks.
I do agree that the commercial stuff has no business flying that free without compensation, but believe it or not, some people do actually use it to swap "garage band" works.
Some thoughts to cast in the pot. I haven't bought a commercial single-artist CD in months. I do however buy CMJ magazine+sampler-CD on a regular basis. A subscription-based napster network following this model would interest me.
--The more you know, the less you know.
You find a guy in a chatroom with a good connection and large collection. You download some stuff to sample, like it, and then go out and search for more stuff from the same artist.
Thats how you can find songs from unkown bands. There are some artists that activly encourage trading of mp3's and other bootlegs, like the Grateful Dead and (I think) Ice T. Many more arists would (some have tried) encourage mp3 trading if they weren't owned by labels.
There are lies, damn lies, and statistics. Please do not use made up percentages of anything. If you have documentation to back up your claim(read: rant) then please post links to the publications.
.MP3 files of the music on the CDs in my CD collection and download them then it is to manually rip every song off of every CD I own. I have every right to the .MP3 version of the song, since I own the CD. Napster is a time saving device.
I own Napster. I use Napster. I use Napster because with my broadband connection it is quicker for me to find
Some of my CDs have scratches on them. I still own them though. Napster allows me to effectively legally "fix" these errors in my collection by downloading good versions of songs that I legally own on CD. That way I don't have to drop more money just to repair something I've already purchased.
Don't call me a thief. I am not a thief.
The RIAA looses. Okay, so they go running to the lawmakers.....
THIS TIME, boys and girls, every one of us had better get off our butts and do something to keep them from being successful.
Write your senator. Write your house member. You can do it very easily through email. It is not that hard. Call them on the phone and talk to them. Make them listen.
If the DMCA can be shown to stifle free enterprise, it will likely see the curb.
Its unfortunate that showing it to stifle free speech isn't enough.
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
-- H. L. Mencken
Salon had an article on those with the most to loose with napster...
s ter_artists/index.html" >here </a> or e r_artists/index.html
The musicians think you should pay for their work...(those gready bastards...)<--note sarcasm in parens.
('ve actualled lived with musicians, its not an easy living, actually music wasn't how they made their living. They would kill for some major label support.
article is <a href ="http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2000/03/24/nap
at http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2000/03/24/napst
since I can never get html posting to work
Why the dig at Justice Thomas? Do you not like black people? Conservative people? Or is it just black conservative people who get your goat?
I don't care if he's black and I do like at least some conservatives -- for example, I think that Scalia is currently the best Supreme, and he ain't no liberal. My dislike of Thomas stems from the fact that he was a politically-motivated politically-correct appointee who, IMHO, does not measure up to the Supreme Court level intellect-wise.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
That's a shitty analogy. Why? Three points: 1 - it is legal for you to record music off the radio.
But from the original poster's point of view that's probably theft as well. After all you get a tape of somebody's music without having paid a cent for it -- it MUST be theft.
2 - it is illegal for you to copy video cassettes (unless allowed to by the copyright holder.)
Wrong. I can copy all I want under the fair use provisions. It's perfectly legal for me to buy a video and make a copy of it.
3 - it is illegal to distribute both recorded movies off TV and music off the radio.
Yes, so? Nobody is arguing that copying MP3s is not a copyright infringement under current law. So what? Laws change. It was probably illegal to tape movies off a TV before that Supreme Court decision.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
People, stop kidding yourself: Napster is a tool that is used exclusively to steal from legitimate artists.
Er, guy, take that ramrod out of your ass. Must be really uncomfortable, living like this.
Obviously your morals are your own business, but I wonder if you ever exceed speed limits or jaywalk. These are against the law, you know? Doing it is bad, eeeeeeevil. By exceeding speed limits you are endangering innocent lives, including children -- yeah, that's right, you are killing children every time you go 40 in a 35 mph zone!
So I don't see what the big deal (morality-wise, not from the point of view of RIAA) about MP3 is. Sure, I get stuff from Napster, listen to it for a while, then delete it. If I like something, I'd buy a CD since my stereo system has waaaay better speakers than my PC.
30 years ago you would probably been screaming that taping TV shows on my VCR is theft. Well, the Supremes tend to be smart people (Thomas excluded) so they said that it's all fine. I guess once the court opinion came down, your morals stopped having problems.
I don't think the recording industry's position is viable. They'll have to come up with new ways to make money from music distribution and I am sure they will. Some will probably die out on the way to the new future, but being a dinosaur sucks anyway.
So, no, I don't think that listening to music I got on Napster is theft. My morality is stretchable enough to accomodate it. Hint: if the morality of 90% of the population can accomodate it, the law is probably wrong. I can also spout a lot of legalese about fair use, right to preview and all that, but it's irrelevant. Morality, after all, is a personal choice. I sleep well at night.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Lowering myself to answering AC posts, but this is too funny to be ignored...
It is the absolute measure of an individual's identity (the property, either physical or intellectal, that he or she owns.)
Heh. Of course, if your identity is nothing but what you own, then, of course, who am I to argue... I, personally, still like to entertain illusions that my own identity doesn't have much to do with the kind of property that I have.
One of these days you Slashdot kiddies are going to learn that property matters.
Sure, property matters. Now, go to a bookstore and buy (no, don't read it inside the store -- that's theft) a basic textbook on property, standard issue for first year of law school. Perhaps you'll learn that property right are quite a complicated issue and are not absolute by any means. Besides, property rights for intellectual property are significantly different from those for tangible property, and there is good reason for this, too. Reading stuff tends to be more useful than walking around the block.
Deep down, you know that you are a thief and a liar as well, but as long as you can continue parroting the liberal line of moral relativism, you can rationalize it and continue to fool yourself into thinking that you're really not a thief.
Ah, a man who knows me better than myself! So, sir, pray tell me what should I do? Should I repent, cover myself with sackcloth and ashes, and prostrate myself before the trinity of RIAA, MPAA and the almighty dollar? Can I still be saved? Aiiiie, I feel the flames of hell licking me!...
Or maybe you are a thief, but you're a nice sort of thief, all cuddly and furry and stuff.
Cuddly and furry and stuff?? [boggles] [boggles some more] [gives up]
Here's hoping you put your favorite artist out of a job by flying into a violent rage every time he dares to ask money for his work product.
My favorite artists tend to be either dead or multimillionaires.
And besides that, flying into violent rage? Me? Wasn't I cuddly and furry just the sentence before that?
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Napster is a tool that is used exclusively to steal from legitimate artists. no its not. I have a few hundred CDs. Having the music on those CDs in my car, at home, and at work, would involve transporting my CDs with me everywhere. Solution: MP3 my collection, and compilation CDs with my fav. songs. Now where I work its easier to download MP3s from someone else, then it is to tie up my machine ripping the CD. I'll admit I have songs I don't own, and I'm downloading the new No Doubt CD from someone right now (which I don't own yet, but I'm picking it up on the way home). Instead of stomping out the pirates the industry should provide me with an alternative. I would pay for MP3s, but to get MP3s right now I have to buy the album, requires shipping or going to the store, rip it, ties up the computer (yes you can still use it but it is slower), versus if they would set up a site, let me choose what songs I want pay for them and d/l them, which could be done anytime with instant product delivery. I don't like the RIAA, and I only use Napster cause it is the best solution out there for getting MP3s.
90% of all statistics are made up.
Don't just make up statistics to back your view, especially if they are completly WRONG.
1 German man thought it was ok to kill off all the jew (ok maby more than 1), but that 1 man was very powerful and had an ability to lead and influence people. He told people what their morals should be, and people followed out of fear or being killed themselves.
The slavery south of the U.S. was a small percent of the US population. Many of the more free thinking southerners were opposed to slavery, but sadly as time went on childered were taught that it was ok, and the though of blacks being in slaves became breed into the southern culture as the norm.
These two instances are completly different that what you are arguing against where you have many completly free thinking individuals, and many artist themselves in support of programs like Napster.
Can you please back up your statement, atleast with some examples of how what I said was wrong? Please note to top part in italics are quotes, I was dissagreing with said quote.
Silly me, I thought the big idea was the theft is wrong.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Are you saying that we should protect the "right"
of a company to try an make money to the exclusion
of the rights of individuals
Sure.... if you show me where you have the "right" to copy other people's work.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
The difference between Corel and MPAA is that Corel violated a COPYLEFT. The copyleft is supposed to force you to share stuff. The MPAA are trying to enforce COPYRIGHT to stop people sharing stuff. See the difference?
So, it makes you wonder if by opening up digital usage of files, if it really would hurt the Music industry?
"Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it." - George Santayana
Good Fast Cheap. Pick any two.
IANAL, but thinking...
---
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
First and foremost, you don't have to allow others access to your files, any more than you have to GPL your software. It's up to you to Do The Right Thing(tm).
:P) Not all of us have enough time to waste it with this kind of crap.
:P Napster's only sin was making distributing mp3's "too easy".
Secondly, with all these lame-ass scams that are cropping up in mp3 search engines (Click on this url to get your free access password to our mp3's... uh huh
As for the rest of this article, I have to agree that this is probably Napsters best defense, and IMHO a legitimate one. How Napster is being used is not the responsability of the creators of said software. As nothing more than a glorified IRC client, the software in itself is nothing really remarkable. The simple fact of the matter is that it makes searching for mp3's that much easier than any other method for retrieving them.
Don't kid yourself for a minute into think that getting rid of napster is some kind of panacea for ending mp3 distribution, there's still ftp and http and now FreeNet, IRC, and god forbid good old trusty e-mail
----
Dave
Purity Of Essence
- Dave
Geez,
I didn't mean that photocopying was plagiarism. Sorry it came out that way.
Take a joke man. Do you really think I believe plagiarism is flattering???
Predestination was doomed from the start.
I find the comparison to Xerox very interesting. I am sure that some time over the course of my collegiate career I photocopied something that I should not have legally done....besides isn't plagiarism the sincerest form of flattery??
The major difference in my mind is that a majority of authors are more interested in having their work read by a larger audience (the reason they are writing in the first place is of people to read.) However, most people in the music industry seem to be preoccupied with money. Otherwise the MPAA and RIAA would be proposing useful implementations of Napster.
So if money is the driving force then controlling the distribution market is key. If you need a reference for this fact check you encyclopedia under Gates, Bill or Vanderbilt
Predestination was doomed from the start.
hint: 90% of all germans thought it ok to kill off all the jews.
You lose, now come up with some real arguments.
Most people have that view because it is in their best interest, in this case, listening to music outside the mainstream, and when they want to. Outside the sphere of corporate influence, which is why the sphere of corporate influence is soo pissed.
--
+&x
Salon had article based on the RIAA's Napster "FAQs" page. Go read both, remove the direct quotes, and read it again. Then remove all the agents and managers comments, and read it again.
Playing music for money ain't easy, anyone throughout history would tell you that. Unfortunately we've progessed into an industrial corporate based nation where people only "make it" if they are millionaires at 20. The really sick thing is looking at all those people who "made it" at 20, and are dead broke by 30. Not only dead broke but unable to play thier own songs (because they would kill for some major label support. , giving up their live's work is less than killing)
The musicians DO get paid for their work, right when they sell it as works for hire to the record companies, it's the new owners who get pissed that people are bypassing their billion dollar (and a bit o'profit) distrubution and promotion schemes. Artists also get paid royalties, but at a much lesser rate than the companies, not to mention the companies are now *legally entitled* to their works for life +75.
Does any of this smell fishy to you? I think it sucks, sucks for musicians, sucks for fans, and sucks for pretty much everyone except the people who are sueing.
So along comes technology that instantly replaces 50 years of infrastructure, and you're going to tell me it's "stealing", if it wasn't for the fact that music has been so expensive for such a long time, most people would call it "sharing".
(sorry, not a flame, but I have to go off on this subject at least once a (G)Napsterstory, call it a moral imperative)
.and here's clue #2, change that little box under the post comments box from Extrans to Plain Old Text, you'll look like less of a clueless idiot. (that's a flame) OHMYGOD, I just realized I'm replying to an AOLer and trying to help, I feel dirty.
--
+&x
...does not mean all uses are illegal. Unless RIAA can prove that Napster has encouraged users to transfer copyrighted works, they're barking up the wrong tree.
What needs to be espoused in the media is that not all of the music worth sharing with others is owned by the recording industry. Of course, the RIAA won't endorse this view because it makes the artists they represent a bit less godlike, hence, less worthy of our entertainment dollars.
---- Politics: Kissing ass and pointing blames.
Of course a dorm shouldn't take priority over a classroom. However an optimal campus network will allow anyone to do anything they need to do. The policing should be handled by the users themselves. They should make sure they don't fuck over the other people using the network. If you want to put the blame somewhere put it on the clueless morons who either can't write their own properly behaving software, or who choose to run software that doesn't properly behave. There should be no artificial limitations on what you can do with a network if it's an appropriate use.
If it's not sold or held in a firm copyright then you can't say it's theft.
After asking what a firm copyright is (one that has a hoard of lawyers behind it?) I want to point out that the law has specified what happens to copyright. If you write a book and then die it passes onto whomever you specified in your will. If you didn't specify then it goes to your decendants. If you don't have any decendants then it's public domain.
If you read a poem written by Poe and it's recorded you own the copyright on that recording. If the style you read the poem included a good amount of interpretation then you can even stop others from reading the poem in the same manner.
It's not just a matter of being out of print. It's a matter of being out of copyright. They aren't the same thing. The Grey Lensman books are out of print but still copyright. Just not being available doesn't make it ok to blindly copy and distribute a work.
The thing is is that Napster is aiding/abetting the weanies who are stealing music via their software. If Napster required everybody to provide a verifiable name, address, etc. that would allow copyright holders to readily track down the offenders then I wouldn't see much of a problem with Napster at all. Let the individuals suffer and watch Napster loose any possibility of making money on the IPO.
30 years ago you would probably been screaming that taping TV shows on my VCR is theft. Well, the Supremes tend to be smart people (Thomas excluded) so they said that it's all fine.
That's a shitty analogy. Why? Three points: 1 - it is legal for you to record music off the radio. 2 - it is illegal for you to copy video cassettes (unless allowed to by the copyright holder.) 3 - it is illegal to distribute both recorded movies off TV and music off the radio.
The reason the RIAA and MPAA stopped fighting VCRs and such is because they convinced congress to pass a "tax" on blank media which get's kicked back to them. Thus they still make some money on all those pirates out there. And on all those legitimate users out there.
So if I was to setup, maintain, advertise, etc. an ftp site that allowed people to distribute binaries of modified GPL software without the source, you'd have no problem with that? Especially if I made it easy for the individuals doing to modifying/distributing to conceal their identities and origins? I mean all I'd be doing is providing an extremely high latency network link.
Are you saying that we should protect the "right" of a company to try an make money to the exclusion of the rights of individuals?
Um do you know that "companies" aren't things? At the root of every company are individuals. Every single one. There exists zero companies that are not owned in one manner or another by an individual or group of individuals. Don't those individuals have rights? Don't they deserve to reap the benefits of the infrastructure they've built to provide their product? Shouldn't they be allowed to form an organization that streamlines the process of doing business?
You aren't automatically entitled to "get a copy" of anything. If you can't find a copy that was produced legally then you can't legally get a copy. That's all there is to it.
ahhh what a controversy.....
where to start?
how about w/ tapes. remember that horrible media. the audio tape? thank god we have evolved. the tape though, is where most of us learned copyright violation. why buy the tape for 10 bucks if I can buy a blank for 2 bucks and copy my buddy's? That was when the problem started. EVERYBODY does it/did it. I would be suprised to find one house in america w/o some sort of copy right infringement, whether it is a tape of the basketball game or a copy of that old jackson 5 album of uncle fred's.
moving on to the artists. why do people defend copyright violations as "sticking it to the man". the "man" being that big evil recording co. (although w/ all their bs lately it makes it really easy to think of them as evil). I think part of it is our wish to see rock stars as in it for the love/desire rather than the money. "Sold out" is thrown at artists like a dagger all the time. we wish to see artists as these perfect tortured beings who do it b/c they must or b/c they love it not b/c they want to make a million bucks. once we take the artist out of the picture w/ this rationalization we are left w/ a bunch of scrubs making profit off "our hero" the artist. it isn't wrong to steal from them. Hell, it is wrong to pay them!
The way I see it, it is time for the recording industry to come up w/ a new paradigm. napster may be beaten but it has shown the common user what most of us here on slashdot have known for some time. we can get nearly unlimited media on our computers. even w/o napster the mp3 revolution was gaining steam. there is no way to get the toothpaste back in the tube. the only thing i see members of teh RIAA can do is license out their DB. Make it a monthly fee. ie. for 10 bucks a month I get access to the sony database of music on demand. I haven't bought a cd in a year and I doubt I am going back. I would however be willing to pay for a valuable service.
It's not "a tool that is used exclusively to steal from legitimate artists," it's a tool that's used to steal from legitimate big nasty corporations. The artists make little, and the system needs to change, bigtime.
DataSquid.net, a little about me.
Arguably, if Napster was a record label, and signed artists which agreed to have their music distibuted via Napster, there would be nothing wrong with it. The fact that Napster does not produce the content is why "the DCMA was never intended for companies like [it]".
--sugarman--
Napster was conceived with the simple goal of facilitating the exchange of pirated music, and they spammed Efnet mp3 channels to build their user base of Rickey Martin and Britney Spears mp3 leeches. Nothing about this company helps the cause of free speech, or a better distribution model for the music industry.
Could you please create a Pirated Music category, for news about Napster and its clones, so that those of us who don't care about this company or its users can filter it from the main page, and pay it the attention it deserves?
YOu can bet on it, that if you want to download that one rare dancemix of your favourite band you'll get the parts 1, 3, 4, 5 and 8 out of 10.
At least that was my experience with it. If it works for you, be happy. I prefer using gnutell, napster or imesh. Or IRC.
--- If OS were buildings, then the first woodpecker to come around would erase 95 % of civilization.
So, copying CDs to your hard drive isn't legal, and it certainly isn't legal to distribute them.
Two words: Fair use.
Under the fair use policy of the US you are allowed to make a limited number of copies of something if you paid for it already. You just can't distribute it.
The Information Revolution will be fought on the command line.
I think you mean out of copyright books. As Jane Austen, Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Thomas Paine, Plato, Edgar Allen Poe, Alexander Pope, Thackeray, Henry Thoreau, Tolstoy, Trollope , Mark Twain, and Emile Zola - to name but a few -are all still very much available from my local bookstore.
You throw around strong words like "stealing" and "theft" but what is theft? Is making a digital copy of something theft?
If I invite you to my home to listen to one of my CD's, are you a thief? Whose goods have been stolen? Who is now missing something they once had?
Come on, I think you're trivializing a bit. You also fail to distinguish the concept of "harmed" from "wronged", both of which are generally immoral and illegal.
In the case of distributing copyrighted music over Napster, nobody is directly harmed in the way that a store owner is harmed when you rob something from there store. However, you're still wronging the artist.
Here's an example of wronging without harming that should appeal to the slashdot crowd. Let's say I break into your house (without damanging anything), and install secret cameras in all the rooms, and I watch you. Assuming I do nothing with the data I'm collecting, you haven't been "harmed". What's the difference if I watch you or not?
Of course, there is a difference. I'm violating your right to privacy, even if you're not aware of that violation. In this sense, you are being "wronged", even though you aren't being "harmed".
Similarly, illegally distributing copyright materials (warez, copyright MP3's), is an example of "wronging", but not "harming". Get it?
-- Will quantum computers run imaginary-time operating systems?
By the way, I only hope that I get chosen to be a member of the government squad that is responsible for rounding up all of the guns.
Geez, why can't you download yourself some pr0n and jerk off to those images, like a normal person?
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Any universal claim falls if a single exception is shown. Your "Don't give me this crap..." line is what is known in logic as "invincible ignorance" (i.e. a deliberate decision to remain ignorant by refusal to listen to the truth).
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Don't you mean the Backdoor Boys? ;-)
And I agree they are stupid to sign away all their rights on their songs.
Ever hear of alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.*? Monitor Usenet for something you might like and download it. You might not find what you want right away, but it'll pop up eventually.
(Usenet might be old-school Internet technology, but it's good old-school Internet technology! :-) )
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
If your ISP's news server sucks, you'll run into that problem (been there, done that). The fix for that is (1) change ISPs to get one with a decent newsfeed or (2) subscribe to a separate newsfeed, such as Supernews. The cheapie ISPs (the ones that charge $10/month or less) are, I suspect, the ones that'll have problems (the time I had trouble grabbing binaries was when I was using one of the $10/month ISPs). I can speak from personal experience that MindSpring and IBM have decent newsfeeds (IBM, though, doesn't do unlimited access, which means you could run up access charges if you try to suck down everything in alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.*).
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
All I can add is more of the same language. Blah, blah, blah...
My legal opinion is still that of "Tool vs. User". Should Remington be held liable when one of their guns is used to commit a crime? I think not. That is the only angle spoken of in the article.
The issue of freedom and intellectual property will not even be raised in-depth because most courts and lawyers are clueless compared to the "freewheeling wisdom" to be found on /.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
If only we could go back in time and get the guy who invented the wheel. the wheel led to machinerie, which led to the printing press, which led in turn to ways of recording sound (grammophone), which led to data recording, which led DIRECTLY to mp3s. He should be sued for starting all this.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
It's like suing Xerox for manufacturing photocopiers if somebody runs off a few copies of their favorite Dilbert and hands them out to coworkers.
This is infuriating, and it will be fascinating to see how (or if) it is ever resolved.
--
This is not my sandwich.
>>Napster is a tool that is used
>>exclusively to steal from legitimate artists.
I wish was a "legitimate" artist. If I was, people would pay companies like Sony, Columbia, and Time Warner big money to listen to my songs.
Sadly, as it is now, I have to settle for MP3s, Napster, and the like.
Tell me how to go "legit" and I'll sign (in blood, right?).
Here's a question for you.. Do you consider it theft to download mp3s of out of print music? That's primarily my interest in mp3s - I have a job, I can (and do) afford to buy CDs.. when I can find them for sale.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
Driving a car drunk requires two things. A Drunk, and a car. Getting mp3's requires two things, a person and a computer w/network. (or a cd ripper/mp3 compressor, but were talking napster/gnutella/ftp/http/irc here). The car and computer w/network are tools. They have no choice in the matter of what they are used for whether it be legal or illegal.
This is where the defense of Napster/Gnutella are coming from. You wouldn't try to eliminate Ford because someone used an Explorer to intentionally run over a pedistrian. You wouldn't get rid of GM because people drive thier cars drunk. Napster/Gnutella shouldn't be destroyed because it was used to rip off a britney spears album. Cars/Napster/Gnutella all have legitimate uses, but it's people who use them for illegal uses, not the tool itself.
-- Bucket
Tom
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Napster is just reflecting what people have been complaining about for a long, long time - The cheesy mass-produced music that we just love is too damn expensive. Very few CDs are worth the obligatory $15, IMHO.
If the record industy wasn't such a bloated near-monopoly very few people would bother to copy and distribute copywritten music. Think $4 CD's and Napster becomes the underground/independant savoir it should be. It'll never happen, the music industry doesn't care about selling a quality product at a competive price, it only cares about hyping the next sensation and making teenagers spend mom's last Jackson on some CD that'll be in the discount bin in 18 months.
If there was real competition the radio would be chock-full of the great music that doesn't usually get signed instead of ballads about teenagers in love and the stores would be full of good, cheap CDs. The blame does belong on both the industry and consumers, more so on the industry for targeting their collective crap at the most impressionable demographic and selling some naive idealized love/lust. This isn't a freedom of speech issue, but do you really think anyone would care about Spears or Brandy if it wasn't for the huge amount of advertising bullshit constantly being poured into mass-media?
Real competition just isn't possible with the media control and advertising budgets record companies have, independants suffer and will continue to suffer until something is done. This is business in American in a nutshell. In the mean time why not steal and piss on the companies you don't like, you can still be moral and disobey the law and not be a hypocrite.
I do. I really do.
People, stop kidding yourself: The Internet is a tool that is used exclusively to steal from legitimate artists. Don't give me this crap about how you know "this guy who is a friend of a friend who has a garage band that uses the Internet to distribute his music." That sort of hand-waving is nothing more than cheap mental masturbation.
If you use the Internet, there is a greater than 99.9% chance that you are a thief.
That doesn't mean that I think the RIAA are the good guys here. They're not. They have consistently opposed reasonable, fair use of music that I bought and have a right to do with what I want. But the Internet is not reasonable or fair. They have a legitimate point, and I hope they stick it to the Internet and stick it good.
Now I don't know what the RIAA is going to do about all of these "open source" Internet clones like Freenet that have popped up, but the open source community would do well to get a life and realize that they're creating a public relations fiasco for everybody. If you aren't willing to pay for your music, you don't get to listen. Period. Don't like it? Deal with it.
Anyways..
:-)
That's more a symptom of the United States not having a proper social system. Chances are that person was starving because of no job, and welfare wouldn't help him. Only malicous people committ crimes for no reason, and they are an incredibly small percentage of crime.
You'll want to head over to kuro5hin.org for freer discussions on this an other topics.. No karma
---
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
These quotes illustrate one of the biggest problems with trying to write specific laws to cover specific, narrow behaviors. The wording of the laws always misses important details. Give me a simple law, a good jury and a judge to answer their questions over endless legislative tweeking any day.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
I have been a professional musician since 1981 and have experienced the theivery of the Recording business first hand. Napster and the following wave should eventually beat the hell out of the labels, BUT! It will also hurt the musicians in the so-called farm leagues in the meantime. Direct loss of sales and low scan numbers will force labels to drop acts. So as the playing field levels out hopefully the small guys coming up can outlast the labels huh? Also there is some thought that Napster and the like are a good way of previewing music. I have bought several CD's after downloading a track or two off of a napster site. I say Bring on the CHANGE! and death to the Tyrants!
Mark J. Panick -Eat Flaming Death Fascist Media Pigs- Philip Proctor aka Firesign Theatre
Aol/Netscape make a browser (netscape) and a portal that indexes web pages (www.aol.com, www.netscape.com). M$ makes a browser (IE) and a portal that indexes web pages (www.msn.com).
Isn't this the same as napster providing the protocol and also offering an index service?
...just food for thought.
This space intentionally left blank.
I was pretty sure that's how the law reads. If I'm not mistaken, you're allowed to make infinite copies of your music and software as long as you're storing them for backup/archival purposes and don't give them to anyone else.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
A quick FAQ on Napster: (I'm no expert either, really)
The MP3's are stored on client's hard drives. All the servers are doing is announcing that you're connected and here's the MP3's this person has to offer. The actual trading of MP3 is client to client. The server hands the requesting client the IP address of the serving client, and the requesting client downloads from the serving client. Napster couldn't really filter that in any way, since the servers don't really know what's being traded.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
You'll have to pardon my ignorance, but why is Napster under fire from the RIAA? Truthfully, Napster itself has done nothing illegal. How is Napster any different than, say, freshmeat.net? Freshmeat is giving away free software, shouldn't the SPA be all over them too? Of course not, because all the software on Freshmeat is open source.
Legally, MP3's are ok. I can chock my hard drive full of MP3's as long as I a) legally purchased that music or b) have consent from the authors/publishers to store it. I have a lot of cool MP3's on my hard drive that I put up on Napster that are 100% legal for anyone to download, possess, and redristribute. That's what Napster was supposed to do. The fact that yahoos trade illegal MP3's isn't the fault of Napster. Period. That's like saying if I store a pirated copy of Photoshop on my ftp site that my ISP is to blame, not me.
Maybe I'm way off on this, since I haven't been following this issue very closely. That's just how I feel.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
If you use Napster, there is a greater than 99.9% chance that you are a thief.
OK, assuming that's true (questionable, but I don't use Napster, so I wouldn't know), how does this make Napster responsible for the theft? It has a fully legitimate purpose in the distribution of "garage bands" as you call them, and therefor can't be considered illegal. Take, for instance, lock picking tools. It may very well be that most of the people who have them use them to break in to houses and such, but where would a lock-smith be without them?
Addlepated - punk & metal
The law would get rewritten in eight minutes, eh?
:).
Well, it would get rewritten in two, but the geeks put a DDoS attack on the automatic voting system, and used that two minute windows as an excuse to hold the most memorable four minute filibuster in recent memory, which swayed congress for all of 30 seconds.
Although I must say that turning the law about on it's heels to actually protect the little middleman is quite admirable. It's sneaky evil, and I can respet that
Is this post not nifty? Sluggy Freelance. Worshi
"Yes, this is still theft."
If it's not sold or held in a firm copyright then you can't say it's theft.
Until there are massive databases of music that a particular company or individual can legitimately say is his/hers then it's not theft. If I write a book and then I die or no one bothers to do anything at all with the copyright in question then it's fair game.
If you don't believe this look at project gutenberg. All sorts of old out of print books that I would almost dare you to find a printed version of one of them in any bookstore. The writers are dead, the copyright gone, no way for anyone who (ethically) was concerned with the production of the thing. So you aren't hurting anyone nor are you violating the law.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
"It's not just a matter of being out of print. It's a matter of being out of copyright. They aren't the same thing. The Grey Lensman books are out of print but still copyright. Just not being available doesn't make it ok to blindly copy and distribute
a work."
Then pray tell how does an intelligent person get a copy of it?
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
That's right folks its called radio. The record companies give away copies of music all the time. Then they encourage these radio stations to broadcast their songs to as many people as possible as often as possible. There have even been cases of record companies paying to have songs broadcast more often. I fail to see the logic in fighting Napster. If you really want a decent copy of a top 40 song all you have to do is turn on your radio and record the damn thing when it comes on. Most stations even give you an occasional oppurntunity to request a song so you can even schedule your recording. If it's a top 10 song you can get it off MTV's total request live via a digital cable connection. MP3s suck so bad I don't see why they even care.
Friends don't let friends use MP3.
There might be examples of using napster for legitime purposes, but the average napster user uses the search engine to find songs he wants, and doesn't give a fsck whether the artist in question has given permission for free distribution. In fact, most people don't even know these artists and so wouldn't know which songs to search for.
In my opinion, for more or less unknown artists who allow the free distribution of their works, napster wouldn't be the distribution tool of their choice for the reasons mentioned above. If I was to produce music for free, I would put it on a web site and advocate it by other means (e.g. on the "legal" section featured by some of the better mp3 sites).
Just my $0.02
--Cthulhu fhtagn!
that wasn't exactly my point...:-)
I consider napster quite useless for the distribution of legal music from unknown artists, so using it as an example for the possibilities to spread such works is IMO a bad idea.
I wouldn't thinks so, if, for example, the napster search engine could offer more information, like "this legal song from that artist is really cool and seems to fit your taste of music, why not try it out?". Of course, this would be rather difficult to implement, and we already have mp3.com...
I'm not interested in prosecuting any napster user; in fact I think that the DCMA is blatantly wrong.
Cthulhu fhtagn!
I suppose that murder laws are a nuisance to some people; Your average felon can't lobby congress to get them changed.(thank bog.) So why should we support these a**holes who rewrite our laws to our detriment? We should raise hell with our congresspeople(living in their multimillion-dollar estates, spending millions to get elected to a 200k a year job) and so on. these people live of our money, that we choose to give them. I havent bought anything since the DVD bs started, and now, i wont be buying cd's until they get off napsters' ass either. I think the best protest is to go to wal-mart, buy a case of blank computer style CDs, and invite our friends over with their cd collection. That way they (the record companies) get no income, and maybe after the fall of the record co.s, artists will get more than pennies per cd.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
If the RIAA shuts Napster down (And I don't really see how a judge could find for them without also shutting down every web and FTP server on the net) I'd be amused if some garage band were to sue the RIAA for restraint of trade or something.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
If you use Napster, there is a greater than 99.9% chance that you are a thief.
I agree with you. I have used Napster, and think it's a great program - I also realize that it was created for the illegal trading of MP3s. What I don't understand, however, is why trading MP3s has to be illegal.
There's no reason why the music industry can't move to accept MP3s, the way the movie industry moved to accept VCRs. I don't know too much about the introduction of VCRs and their impact on the motion picture industry, but I do know that now VCRs are a great source of revenue for production houses. Why can't the music industry do the same? Is it that difficult to change from CDs to MP3s? I understand that MP3s can be gotten and traded for free, which makes it difficult for the music industry to make any money this way, but can't someone think of a way to generate revenue from MP3s? It can't be that difficult....
Napster & Gnutella & other similar programs are used now to trade illegal MP3s - no one can deny that. The RIAA or MPAA or someone else in the industry should work with people from Napster/Gnutella/etc to come up with a new program. By using this program, you can find an MP3 of every single song ever recorded, but which makes you pay, say $1 per MP3. With something like this, I think they'd have a much better chance at combatting illegal MP3 trading than they do by attempting to destroy the programs that make this trading possible. I'm not saying that something like this would gain widespread acceptance, but I do believe that it's a much better approach than suing the hell out of anyone who crosses the music industry.
Eruantalon
Eruantalon
The Annals of Middle-earth
The RIAA does not control every record label.
Did that sink in? If not - go read it again. The RIAA is a conglomerate of several MAJOR record labels, but that hardly constitutes ALL record labels. Not even close.
Thus, artists on non-RIAA labels would not have to be "going through the RIAA". Similarily, Napster is not stealing from the RIAA. The RIAA has no inherent right to profits of non affiliated labels.
Best regards,
SEAL
You are right about 'rationalizing it away', there is a lot of 'conflict of self interest' when I try and think rationally about such things...
I won't repeat what others have said so wonderfully (pointing out that this tool is no different than FTP, Usenet, etc, other than it's popularity and effectiveness).
Now I know that if we don't make these highly effective tools illegal, you (the music industry and artists) will be at the utter mercy of the ethics and morals of the masses. But I think you're beginning to be at the mercy of something else that will have almost as big an effect:
Who says the amount of music being produced in this world today is the right amount? Or not enough? Clearly not the people listening to music, they're not screaming out loud willing to pay more and more money for it.
Furthermore, with technology making it possible for *ALL* music made worldwide to be available to *ANYONE* *ANYWHERE*, with *NO* distribution costs (I mean no packaging, middlemen, etc, I'm not talking about pirating), well, suddenly even if you didn't have Napster and ftp and usenet, you are faced with a MONUMENTAL increase in competition, AND decreased revenue due to the technological efficiencies introduced.
With such strains, something has to give. A lot of people in the industry have to lose their jobs, change careers, or find new niches or entirely new business models (or earn $50 million instead of 150 - admit it, both starving artists and superstars exist, and everything in between). Just like the industrial revolution, new efficiencies cause short term displacements and hardships.
Society will just have to come into equilibrium between supply and demand, where the 'demand' expressed in dollars spent is a LOT less than currently, and the supply has been suddenly vastly increased. The increased competition and decreased costs are fait accompli. And I'm afraid that nothing is going to stop the technology. It routes around damage all by itself. You're only hope is if a large enough percentage of the population don't pirate music, whether through lack of interest, skills, or favorable morals. We already have some data that's applicable to trying to predict how that will turn out - look towards current figures on software pirating.
Basically, I'm saying that:
a) You're screwed for sure,
b) and you're screwed some more, unless society finds it's morals, or develops a greater appreciation for your product and becomes naturally willing to pay as much as you would like for it.
Regarding that last point - personally I think that music never WAS worth more than a couple dollars per albumn. Hey, that's all the artists ever got. It's only now with real competition, choice, and market dynamics that the price of the product may reach it's natural level.
I mean, economies of scale have to come into it at some point, with *ANY* digital medium(*). If we can produce an nearly infinite number of widgets and give them to a nearly infinite number of people with nearly no cost.... how much should the widget be priced in the market? Software should be getting cheaper, better, faster, and offering more!! Not still stuck where it was 10 years ago, buggy as hell. And music sure shouldn't be costing me $20 per CD. Not if 5,000,000 of us have bought it. (Of course there has to be some markup for it's UNIQUENESS... the pure market goes a little wonky when you're talking about something unique...)
A now famous Canadian once said decades ago: "The medium is the message". I've never really been sure what it meant. But I might be a bit closer now.
Yes yes, I'm rationalizing it all away. Bite me.
I do know one thing for certain that isn't affected by my self interest:
IT'S COMING. YOU CAN'T STOP IT. NEITHER CAN I.
(*) - If all 100,000,000 of us can take and publish high quality digital pictures, how long before Bill Gates' expensive "digital photo archive" becomes worthless? The only thing in it worth anything will be the ones that can't be taken by one of us, and that means pictures of the past!>Nowhere does the original poster mention banning Napster. He/She seems more outraged about music piracy then banning some silly program.
I guess I took the following quote as 'anti' Napster, but basically you're right.
>>> You may wonder what the hell programs whose sole purpose is to circumvent copyright laws is doing on a .. site such as Slashdot.
His comments hit quite close to home, and I started out trying to see what I could write if I tried very hard to eliminate my self interest bias. In the end I had a bunch of less than coherent rehash of what others have said so well, (which I discarded except for the item you noted), and the other insights that I eventually left in my post, which I've never seen anyone really bring up..
I guess I could have taken my post and put it somewhere else, as it ended up being not so much of a 'reply' to his post, but rather some thoughts on the marketplace aspect of things, the inevetability of the shift, and the only potential counter to Napster like technology being the advancement of societies morals...
Just wanted to point out that Gnotella 0.1 ( Gnutella Unix clone) is out. (I mirrored the tar.gz, since I couldn't find it on the webpage anymore)
Or you can, of course, use web-based gnutella-searches like this to search for your strawberry-rhubarb pie recipes.
-- "Tradition is the illusion of permanence."
Don't treat the effect, treat the cause.
No matter how deep you dig, there's always an underground level that's even deeper.
IRC.
Open Source.
FTP
FreeNet
httpd
need i continue?
We win. It's already over. I'd love napster to win because its a useful tool (I don't care about man-made laws that protect those who can't get with the times), but all in all, I don't care either way. I'm still going to be able to download whatever I want, whenever I want. I'm going to go out for my victory lap now.
Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net) - AOL IM: MicroBerto
Berto
Here's my DeCSS mirror. Where's yours?
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
Here's my DeCSS mirror. Where's yours?
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
Hint: if the morality of 90% of the population can accomodate it, the law is probably wrong.
.1% that actually listens to the music and then buys it. But please, please don't say that the majority view is the right view. Most people have the view because it is in their best interest, in this case, free, pirated music.
hint: 90% of all germans thought it ok to kill off all the jews. 90% of whites thought it ok to enslave and degrade blacks in the U.S.
Just because a majority of the people agree on something does not make it right, at all, notta, whatsoever.
As for the morality thing, whether it is relative or absolute is debatable. Different famous philosophers have different views about that. So don't think that you're view is the only view, thinking that in itself shows that you believe something absolutely - that everything is relative. The AC is right, you are the
Obviously there have been a few mail bombing incidents over the years. Most of these packages in the US have been carried by either UPS or the United States Postal Sevice.
If ISPs are responsible for the activities of their users if they fail to stop them, then I see no reason why the USPS is not responsible for the assisted distribution of mail bombs. Face it. Corruption is everywhere ... it all starts here :)
Student Rights site:
San Francisco intellectual property attorney Neil Smith of Limbach & Limbach acknowledges the law is ambiguous but said he believes Congress intended it to protect Net access providers like America Online, AT&T WorldNet and MCI Worldcom, definitely not companies like Napster.
From what they just said, it looks to me like Congress is descriminating against the little guy, if favor of people who have the ability to LINE POCKETS the best.
GET IT?....move along....nothing to see here....
> We live in a capitalist society, and all
> corporations try to increase profits as
> much as possible.
Are you saying that we should protect the "right"
of a company to try an make money to the exclusion
of the rights of individuals?
It does seem these days that companies only talk
about "rights" when it is the "Right" to do
something profitable.
If someone finds a way to makemoney...hey great.
If they can profit...fine. however, I don't
believe in any "Right to profit". If your buisness
model is not profitable in the face of new
technology, then it should die. Whether your
buisness and livelyhood die with it is up to you
and your ability to adapt.
The RIAA wants to perpetuate their way of doing
buisness, by strangling new technology. They
would rather force everyone to continue with
buisness as usual then have to actually adapt
to new challenges and actually compete on a
level playing feild.
They want to perpetuate utterly unenforcable
things like "Copyright" by trying to eliminate
peoples ability to copy without authorization.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
> Whoa bucky, slow down there. Are you saying
> Copyrights are unenforcable, or that you'd like
> them to be unenforcable?
I am saying that they ARE unenforcable. The most
that can be done is a few people be caught now
and again, only the biggest "offenders". When
someone copies a work, no dead body is left.
Nothing that would tip someone off to the fact
that it has happened. It is impossible to stop
unauthorized copying now that everyone and their
brother has the ability to do it.
(back when only a small number of people had
ready access to the technology needed, then
copyright was enforcable)
> Are you saying authors/artists/programmers have
> no right to protect
Claiming the rights of the authors or artists
seems a little backwards. What you are advocating
is the right of an author to dictate the actions
of other people. This is, in essence, my problem
with "Intellectual property" claims. it is
claiming the rights to something which exists
entirely in someone elses posession and on
someone elses equipment.
Rememeber, the original intent of copyright
was to make producing works profitable to authors
so that they would make works, in a time when
most authors did not have the ability to publish
on their own and thus to encourage them to
publish, offered them a way to make sure that the
publisher pays them.
Today, the means needed for publishing is
available to any author. The technology for
publishing is available to most any author.
I do not believe that we need, any longer, to
cede our rights to copy to the authors (which
is what copyright technically is) to encourage
the production of works.
Is this bad for some buisnesses? Only if they
are unwilling to adapt. Change happens. It will
happen no matter how much the RIAA and others
kick and scream about it. Survivors adapt and
move on. Its called progress.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Yes. However, if new technological developments
make their buisness model unprofitable, then they
must adapt.
As someone said in another group (mailing list) a
few weeks back...There used to be an
"Ice Industry" where workers would cut ice from
lakes and places where ice naturally formed, and
ship it to places where people could buy ice.
With the advent of freezers, any person who can
afford electricty to their home, can make ice.
Do you think that the Ice Industry would have been
right to lobby congress at the time to have laws
passed, to stop individuals from buying freezers
and making their own ice?
This is effectivly what the RIAA wants. They want
to stop new technology from being used by
individuals, because it conflicts with their
buisness model's profitablity.
The problem I see is that these laws of copyright
were designed in a time when coping a work was
either done laborously by hand or on a big
expensive machine called a "printing press".
The law was not made with todays technology in
mind. The law was not made to stop individuals
from copying and shareing works, it was made to
stop big publishing houses from publishing works
and making money, and not paying authors.
Now they are trying to take old ideas and patch
them with duct tape and bubble gum to try and
keep the old ideas from passing away. Thats not
surprizing, througout history those who were
in power before, opose any change that makes them
obsolete.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
You are right, your example does not make a valid
argument.
What I am saying is that the law needs to make
sense. The law, as it stands today, is
unenforcable.When a law becomes outdated it should
be removed.
The RIAA and freinds are trying to use the law
to stifle change, to maintain the status quo
because it is better for them.
If their buisness model becomes unprofitable (like
the ice industry and countless others over time
have) then their industry will die out. I do NOT
suport the passing of new laws to support
companies that can not adapt.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
You know, this ain't gonna earn you karma. I should know, just look at my history of posts lately... :*>
However, I enjoyed reading your opinion very much, so don't let karma be the judge on what to think and express!
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
First of all your post is just cut'n paste from several others posted here on Slashdot, with a twist typical of "Elite" Slashdotters, saying that the bunch of us is living in self-denial. I humbly disagree, and labelling people only makes you look bad in the long run. Unfortunately, many of my own arguments will be borrowed too, just showing that we all can masturbate together instead of spending time finding REAL solutions..
;-)
"You may notice a large number of posts made on Slashdot concering Napster, or similar programs such as Gnutella or FreeNet. Often these will be posted under "Your Rights Online" (YRO), in order to show how the use of Napster affects your "rights". You may wonder what the hell programs whose sole purpose is to circumvent copyright laws is doing on a conservative (yes, I mean it) site such as Slashdot."
First of all, Napster does not circumvent the copyright laws. Downloading- and making copyrighted works available for upload is still illegal, but not the tools themselves. You may do the same with IRC, FTP, ICQ, HTTP/HTML, floppy-disks and dozen of other ways. It's just that programs like Napster is specifically made for sound-formats and finding other peoples albums. You may state that the purpose behind making Napster was to make it easier for people to do illegal copying. However, the actual use is what's interesting, as you cannot (yet) control people's thoughts and intent.
As for Slashdot being conservative, where have you got that ridiculous judgement from? Stories are fetched from all over the world (in theory), and submitted by many different kinds of people (also in theory). But just saying that the Slashdot-crew themselves should- or does conform to conservatism, is IMHO laughable. I think you have misunderstood something completely fundamental: They're different people, with different minds and goals.
"Let me explain to you. In the back of their minds, most Slashdot readers ("Slashbots")"
What a display of arrogance! I believe most people read Slashdot to get many different opinions and distributed information from many different places. There's many topics from religion to cyberpunk, and even if many tend to agree on certain topics such as Linux and stuff, doesn't mean people don't develop personal opinions while they read.
"... know that they simply don't want to pay for anything which they can get illegally for free. Most people are exactly the same way. Napster et al allows them to get music for free, so they use it. They know that this is copyright violation, which is a bad thing to do. This brings them feelings of guilt which they want to do away with."
Here you have a valid point. Yes, people DO want things for free, or as cheap as possible. It's the fundamental mechanism of effectivity, capitalism and free-market. Is that suddenly wrong now? Do we HAVE to live in a limited world with limited goods just because that is the way it has "always been"? For example: If a new invention could create free energy and mass for everybody, should this be banned because it would be out of control? (A very legitimate reason seen from one perspective, but I digress. Just wanted to point out that life isn't necessarily easy, and quick opinions leaves you nowehere.)
Then you claim that violating a copyright (law) is a bad thing to do, but everything is relative. I think you would regard laws a bit different if you lived in a dictature. Laws != Morals and ethics (Right and Wrong), and even those are highly subjective. Noone can say "this is right" and "this is wrong". You can only truly say: "This is right for _me_", "this is wrong for _me_."
So when we agree that this only applies to the ego self, you go further by claiming people have a bad conciense about copying illegally. Well, maybe you're right, but only because _we're told to have it_! Corporations and magazines states over and over that infringing and violating IP and copyright is _theft_, a horrible thing, piracy. But is it really theft? Do I steal something from you by reading your sourcecode, listening to your music or saving your film on my HDD. Do you actually lose anything? Not actually, you can't compare the natural laws of information to that of physical objects. You can't prove that I would've bought your CD or DVD. Why should I feel guilty for helping my neighbour (as RMS put it)? We shouldn't feel guilty over breaking laws, because they're only a means to control us. (IANAL btw, this is crummy legal advice
Why should we let us be controlled you may ask? Well, it's easier to live that way. You don't have to have much responsibility, just do what they say. It's like in the military, you'll know what I'm talking about if you've ever been in there. It's for children, and we're growing up!
Also there is the issue of money and power in all of this. The record-companies and movie-industry want as much as possible. They want control over the production, distribution _and_ the use. They'll probably want control over disposal and other stuff too if they can think of it. Why? Because this gives them _more_ money, power and success. It's a war out there, but where did the fine _art_ go? Is everything really just about money and power? Don't corporations violate another person's "moral rights" by having power over him or her?
"How do they do this? They rationalize it away. It's the copyright laws that are wrong, not them. DCMA needs to be rewritten. The MPAA needs to be destroyed. It's an expression of free speech. And those greedy record companies take all the money anyway. Never mind that with pirate mp3s the artist never sees any money anyway. This way, they are sticking it to "the Man", who exists to make life difficult for 31337 Linux users like... "
Nobody says everybody must follow the same rules set out by the industry and government. The DMCA and all other such laws, came _after_ people started pirating, not the other way around. Also, having a huge company does not earn you the right to profit, again, that's what capitalism and free-market is all about. If the industry can't keep up with technology, it must either stifle it, enforce control over the public or go bankrupt. I'm sorry to say this, but if they don't change soon, they're going to pay dearly because the public are paying their salaries and stock options. If they don't change their bussiness model and stop cheating customers and artists, new technologies are going to run over this questionable industry like trains do.
"...themselves. Yes, it is flimsy, and yes, it allows them to take the moral high ground by robbing hard-working artists. Yes, many will say that modern popular music is all horrible anyway, and that their favorite music is the only worthwhile type, but then go on to slam others for being "elitist" in any discussion in which Gnome or KDE is mentioned."
IMHO, and I think you agree, anybody judging other people, their taste or preferences are fooling themselves and cutting new interesting experiences away from their lives. We all are guilty of this from time to time, some more often than others. In the end, we only fool ourselves however, but it can be REALLY annoying to others too. Likewise, saying that everyone of such and such opinion, also have this opinion about music/GNOME/KDE/whatever, is a futile exercise of extrapolation and generalisation. Only fooling oneself.
"And what about the Corel Linux beta? Didn't that violate the GPL by attaching a boilerplate disclaimer saying that only people over 18 years old could download it? And remember the cries of the Slashbots that Corel should be sued, destroyed. boycotted, etc.? All because Corel who was helping out the Linux community mistakenly added a certain clause to their beta, which violated the GPL. As you can see, the "community" is quick to cry foul when the copyrights on their software is violated, even by companies with good intentions. Our copyright good, yours bad.
It's called "hypocrisy" and if you read Slashdot enough, you'll have to get used to it."
How is this hypocrisy? I would say just the opposite of that, since this shows that the community doesn't take sides with "good" companies disregarding their "bad" sides. Whining, bitching, fear and panic yes, but certainly not hypocrisy. Your argument here only display your ignorance of fundamental differences in licenses, and that this site doesn't really have an official policy or bias (except News for Nerds).
"Now ask yourself exactly why ther is coverage of Napster on a site obstensibly devoted to Free Software. Napster is proprietary as hell. Those protocol specs had to be reverse engineered. Isn't proprietary software bad? Isn't all free software superior? Isn't "open sourcing" a piece of software the best way to improve it?"
Again, who said Slashdot was about Free Software only? If you want a site dedicated to that, go to the GNU homepage. You sure as hell won't find it here, there's even Microsoft-news on here. I'm beginning to suspect you're a troll or flamebait now.
About if Open Source is the Best Way Or Not To Every Conceivable Problem, there are two answers: Theoretically: yes. Practically: no. Simply put, we need a bussiness-model for Open Source and Free Software to work (food on the platter), but it's still lacking. So when people are arguing this, they're usually talking about two different things: What's best for programmers and customers. And what's best for the pockets of the owners and shareholders. Let me remind you, people are always in war about this, that's what's free marked is about, war.
"These are all bleatings of the party lines. Here, we consider proprietary software Evil until Rob Malda tells us otherwise, or it gets ported to Linux. Then it becomes a special class of proprietary software which somehow becomes better than the rest. Napster is one example. WordPerfect is another. Somehow, they are able to ignore this seemingly large discrepency by claiming that these companies are "helping" the "community". The only one being helped is Andover.Net who gets to sell ads to these people after giving them free publicity on the most popular "Linux" site of them all."
So you rather prefer people don't have different opinions, and some share them? There are opposing opinions and partylines all over the world. Why not try to see the cores of your truth in other's views, rather than bash down "partylines".
Maybe a few people are hypocritical here. So what? It's not like it's the first time. There are good and bad people on both sides of a conflict. What's bad is labelling people as this-or-that, or judging them without really knowing them.
"Stop lying to yourselves."
I'll try, but there's only so much a "Slashbot" can do on its own...
- Steeltoe
If you keep your opinion and I keep mine, not much good that will do.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
> If you use Napster, there is a greater than 99.9% chance that you are a thief.
Thief? Yeah, most people who use Napster are breaking that interpretation of the law, but they're not pirates, and they're not thieves. They copy, they don't steal.
Is it breaking copyright law to distribute copyrighted material? Yes. Is it breaking it to download it? Even a judge I heard talking about the issue doesn't know for sure, and he's an expert who had just ruled on the issue.
Economics says that a product is worth what the supplier and customer can agree on. Not what the supplier decides it is. To me, an 'nsyc cd is worth nothing - while the girl next door might donate a kidney. Even the arguement that the Napsterites are stealing the monetary "worth" of the cd is meaningless.
First, let me apologize for this post being off topic, but I'd really like to get this issue/idea out there.
In startrek, all it takes to listen to any song is for Picard to request the computer to play it, and the song is played. Imagine, if you will, if music was non-propriatary (sp?) Now that studio equipment cost has gone down a significant amount, Its not uncommon for people to have small music studios in their house. Hell, ive got a friend who se got a studio in his dorm room.
Moving right along, the main thing that is preventing us from having a full database of all the creative works in history is greed. There is this amazing resource that could be distributed worldwide, but corporate greed is slowing down a massive transition in human history. We have the ability, the means, and some say a duty to give as many people access to these musical expressions as possible.
Let's face it people. The future is in widely distributed creative content for free. Now many say that if its free then the artists will be discouraged from their creativity, but society will find a way to continue to create. It always has.
I know I'm being Idyllic, but the internet could be making many more fundamental social changes if it wasnt for corporate greed and a fearful government who both know that the internet threatens their power and status.
If these institutions do not conform to the new system there will be a social revolution. How it will go down i dont know, but it will happen eventually.
Ill stop with the katz-esque revolutionary blather now.
Basically these institutions are trying to halt an extremely socially benificial system, and that is a Bad Thing. They could pull their head out of their collective asses and realize that this is not something to fight, but to embrace for the good of society. (wow, how cliche)
Ok I'm done.
no
The DMCA was never intended for companies like Napster.
is like saying
The First Amendment was never intended for organizations like the KKK.
Few would agree with this kind of legal blindness.
------
yeah, apparently it is this fancy software that makes it possible to 'share programs' (direct quote from some guy from some radio music magazine. dumbass) of music between college dorm rooms. it's all tom petty and that kinda music though. i saw some crystal method, which is good for all those ecstacy freaks at college. but it's all legal, they were talking to the head dude at USC and he even said so. -my report on dateline's "NEWS" they should call dateline "news for sheep, stuff that's lies" hehehe.
/-//|/
"..Constructive critizism is always welcome however."
Hmm. This is a tough one. I certainly do not condone pirating music, but I don't think that Napster should be held responsible if its users use its service to pirate music. I think that instead of going after napster, the RIAA should go after the people using napster to distribute illegal mp3's. That would shut down piracy real quick. But the very fact that legal mp3s CAN be distributed over napster should be enough to protect its existence.
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
OK, here's some thoughts:
"Artists, music studios and the recording industry are angry they don't get proceeds from the swapped files"
That's interesting. I have yet to hear of any artists complaining. In fact, most of the new technology out there has been embraced by the musicians, who would be just as happy getting free of The Industry.
"All the new software could have been done by the record companies. But what you see is the industry trying to preserve the old model as opposed to it taking advantage of the new model and being innovative and cutting-edge."
This man (Jonathan Band) may be a genius. It's a PERFECT description of what's going on, all in two clear sentences.
Finally...
"The DMCA was never intended for companies like Napster."
He may not have intended it this way, but Neil Rosini is quite right. The DMCA was intended for companies like Sony, Columbia, and the RIAA. Note that this implies it also wasn't intended for the artists.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Hey, the law, and the courts exist to protect you even when it might not be popular. If 90% of the people want to take your land to build a highway, a park, or an airport, they can. But the rule is they have to pay.
They could harvest your organs for transplant and give them to 20 different people who need organs. Let's let the 21 of your vote. I bet you don't get even 5% of the vote there. The law shouldn't protect you I guess.
The law gives a person, even someone with an unpopular position, a remedy short of buying a shotgun and going after what makes them mad. The latter option doesn't look so hot to me, but maybe it does to you.
Isn't this like saying that we don't need protected mode as long as all we run is good programed real mode programs that isn't written by morons.
Programs will go nuts and so will the coders, but the network shouldn't.
I think the music industry has a right to fight napster. The way it seems, napster's primary purpose is to allow people to pirate music on a wider scale. This deprives the industry of money that it could have earned through the sale of CDs, etc.
Wow. You have been listening to the noise put out by the RIAA far too much. Would you like to substantiate your claim that "napster's primary purpose" is piracy? If you actually look at what Napster provides, nowhere in there is piracy of copyrighted music an implicit part of its use. Napster allows you to share and acquire MP3's easily - there ARE legally available MP3's - take a look at MP3.com for example. The history of free distribution of electronic format music goes back a long way - look at the vast numbers of music tracks available in the Amiga archives for example dating back into the late eighties. People are often happy just to know that someone enjoyed their work - there is reward in knowing that even one person liked it. The idea that people might like to distribute their work entirely without financial gain seems to have been totally missed by the RIAA in their quest to squash Napster.
This is not to say that Napster is not being used to distribute copyrighted songs in MP3 format. But there is no point in shooting the messenger - that is why the postal service is not responsible for the material which is posted via them, why Internet routing companies are not responsible for the traffic flowing through them. Realistically, RIAA and similar conglomerates must come to some reasonable method for distributing their products in this new media. My personal beef over all of this is that the artists who are signed up to these large record companies see very little of the cost of the CD I buy. Why should the artist, who is after all the person who created this original music, getting less than 10% of the CD cost (often much less than 10% of the CD cost). That tells me that somewhere along the line, someone is scooping a substantial profit at the expense of the artist. Whatever you say, MP3s are not the same quality as CDs - they lack depth, especially in complex pieces, and I'm certain that there is money to be made from the following business model:
Why could this work? What advantage does a web-based business have? The main answer is distribution and audience - once you get people used to the idea of try-before-you-buy and reasonable prices, along with the concept that music could even be selected on a track-by-track basis and custom CDs sold at a slight premium over conventional CDs, you do NOT have to spend so much money getting your ads into the mainstream press. You can let distribution systems like Napster do your advertising for you - make sure the site name is in the title of the MP3s you distribute, so you get peoples interest. Advertising seems to consume vast quantities of budget these days, so cut those costs and make use of the distribution offered by the web.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
All these people say that they use Napster legally, but I wonder how exactly can that be done? The majority of legal MP3's are from unknown garage bands that are found on the net, through MP3.com or wherever else. Seeing as these bands are unknown, and the masses would have no idea of their name, then that makes searching for an unknown band almost impossible. Napster REQUIRES that you know of either the band name or the song name PRIOR to conducting the search, unless you are just randomly typing words in the search box. Because there are no built-in methods for promoting artists then how could someone realistically use Napster for legal purposes?
I am fairly certain that everyone that has used Napster has used it illegally as that is it's draw - the fact that there are illegal MP3's available for download. Had there been solely legal MP3's, do we honestly believe that it would of gotten to the magnitude that it is at today?
Moderation Totals:Flamebait=2, Insightful=11, Interesting=2, Overrated=2, Total=17. (when I saw it)
Heh, you don't think that counts as "through the roof?" Not to mention the hilarious (Score:5, Flamebait) score.
Although I'm intrested who gave up four of their moderator points to put it beyond a +9.
"Napster is intrinsically designed to promote priacy. This is a plain and simple fact."
Maybe if you consider the words "fact," "simple" and "plain" to mean something totally different than a "plain and simple fact." The very idea that Napster is so openly debated by honest and intelligent people makes it impossible to say with some degree of integrity what someone else designed Napster for.
It is a fact that Napster is used extensively as a medium of piracy. It is not a fact that piracy is its sole and explicit purpose.
"There are far better methods for artists to distribute their music than napster, including a billion websites."
I've yet to see any website offer a system that allows you to download legal mp3s with the ease that Napster (and similar services) allows.
"So napster's legal uses are already met by a wide variety of other services and its main use is as a tool of priacy. Thus, it should be banned."
Your insane conclusions notwithstanding, the ratio of legal to illegal is central to our society and our morals. This is what creates such controversy in copyright issues: should the tool be banned because people use it illegally? if so, where do we draw the line? The answer, unfortunately for us, is that it can't be drawn, at least not with any accuracy. Someone will always draw it closer than you want, and someone else will always draw it farther than you want.
Please, don't ever say again so calmly that "thus, it should be banned." Nothing is as black and white as it seems.
If you use Napster, there is a greater than 99.9% chance that you are a thief. The debate on copyright centers revolves around a (false) legal positivism (i.e. gov says so, therefore il/legal). Does a musician really "own" the 1s and 0s on the CD? And what do I own when I purchase the CD? The right to listen to it? Only? This would be the case if I'd made a contract with the artist (maybe like that on a software disk, a license) but I can't find that. Just warnings. But I didn't agree to their terms. This issue is over. The distribution model for digital entertainment will need to change dramatically. I wonder if Napster would be such a big success if CDs cost $5 (or some other price which would deflate the temptation to search through all the Napster junk offerings to find a decent rip).
I hate to argue against these guys, but that is going to be a very difficult thing to convince the judge, if phrased like that in from of a tech-savvy judge. Not only do they provide the protocol, but an indexing database server as well (as I understand the technology at least, I may be wrong.) Web(http) and FTP, the two example given cover the actual wire protocol.) The protocol's dont index the information which is available on the web, or ftp. There ARE services which can legally index the information, which is where I see their loophole being. Google hasn't been sued yet for carrying a database which contain links to software cracks (which they do if you type in the "-softwarename- crack" in their search.) It will even rank them for you, with the most linked to one first, and a cached version of the page!
I think it would be much better for them to take that line. I think (I am no attorney) that all they would have to do is prove they are linked to legit MP3's as well.)
Indexing content is consider "ok" on the internet, and so is deep linking. I don't think their argument on it's own can stand up, but these two together could create a fairly solid defense.
Don't take this as legal advice, or anything like that. This is my uneducated knowledge of the laws-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
This is just the latest junkball tossed at us by people making more money than they should. Think back to the huff the record industry got in when people started selling used CDs a few years ago. They said it wasn't fair because people wouldn't know if they were buying a used CD or a new one! Sure, they were looking out for the consumer then, not to mention the $10 profit on each new CD.
I don't bootleg CDs, but I won't cry too hard for the recording industry when they don't get paid. I don't buy the story that the artists get hurt by lifting music: the band James used to make more money on selling T-shirts at concerts than on their contract. The more people that hear the music, the more people go the shows, the more money the band makes. The more people buy the CDs, the more money the regime makes. It's ridiculous.
I don't know. You won't shut down the web because it's used for all manner of evils, right? Napster doesn't select the music that's distributed on it. It would be foolish to say that intellectual property isn't ignored by most napster users, but that doesn't in and of itself show that Napster should be shut down. The problem is much bigger than Napster. Intellectual Property itself is being challenged here, and the answer is going to be some sort of a compromise. There has been a sea change in the intellectual property world, and all the king's horses and all the king's men...
OoO
OoO
Please do not publish outside of
Well, well. I'm glad to see that the DMCA is finally being put to good use. What do you want to bet the MPAA and RIAA are going to be upset if all their precious (gollum - oops, sorry) money they spent to lobby for the DMCA ends up supporting the very thing they wanted to stop.
kwsNI
I can't really see how Napster can win, even though they claim that they cannot be held responsible for their user's actions.
It's a bit like taking a ride in someone's car when the driver is drunk. You are aiding and abetting an offence, which is an offence in itself.
IANAL of course!
Jeff
stty erase ^H
In this case, copyright was owned by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty through therir own label, KLF Comm's. They made the decision to terminate the company. They made the decision to burn the million pounds remaining from the company. They have stated on several occasions, very clearly, that they, the copyright holders, are not concerned about the copying and distribution of anything pertaining to KLF Comm's. Check out the copyright notice at the mancentral archive for more info.
This is essentially similar to the Grateful Dead's position. It's a specific waiver by the copyright holder that makes copying OK, not their demise.
The Name KLF was indeed often decoded to Kopyright Liberation Front, but Bill & Jimmy delighted in changing it every time they were asked. So, does their use of the name Ketamine Acid Freaks in some way justify the violation of ancient copyright? Or Kings of Low Frequency?
Now I've got pretty much the whole KLF back catalogue. Anything I could get on vinyl for less than 50 pounds I have on vinyl. secondhand. But then I really love the hunt itself. A lot of other stuff I got by other means, but with the blessing of Bill & Jimmy, as it happens. Incidentally, copyright persists for 75 years after the creator's death.
What, me worry?
Oh my god.. I can see it now.. product placement in songs...
"And she's buying a stairway... to Pepsi"
-------- "All I want in life's a little bit of love to take the pain away" --Spiritualized
Clever defense. I'll bet Napster lawyers have some "free enterprise" arguments to add to their arsenal, too. This case could have the key (read: constitutional) ingredients to unseat the DMCA. If the DMCA can be shown to stifle free enterprise, it will likely see the curb.
cat
On the other hand, I think the music industry needs to change its strategy. The internet has brought more emphasis on services rathar than physical goods. My suggestion to the idustry is to make music available free on the internet and earn money on advertisement.
"Control the media, control the mind."-Cabal
"Congress intended it to protect Net access providers like America Online, AT&T WorldNet and MCI Worldcom, definitely not companies like Napster." I love this quote. What is this guy saying, that because congress intentionally shield the ISPs from liability, other 'internet service providing' companies that just dont happen to be traditional ISPs are protected. (I'm laughing because it also implies, that if AOL wanted to distribute mp3s to it's subscribers, it could because it is a big media company not a little pirate napster warez thing. --gales of derisive laughter, bruce)
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This is just another non-debate........
First allow me to say this. I imagine most of us use MP3's 'responsibly'.......ie. Its a great way to sift the diamonds from the sand. What we like we buy.......(no MP3 stays on my HD longer than a week.....)
Of course, not everyone does it this way and 'Oh my Lord!' guess what happens.....
....The music industry loses a bunch of money in sales. When you consider the numerous ways in which they have screwed the public over the years I don't think we should lose too much sleep.
My main point is off-topic....."MP3's are a god awful way to listen to music"
Why is it so popular?
Small enough to download........and errrr.. thats about it...and what price do we pay...?
... The sound quality is abysmal...it is sub-CD and this may come as a shock to some of you, but good old analogue vinyl has vastly superior sound quality (ok...surface noise can be a problem)...
..just ONE revolution of a vinyl groove contains more musical information than a WHOLE CD. Vinyl holds information at a close to molecular level. "So what!" I hear you say.
What does this information translate into..?...simply more detail and more realism.......and thus a more rewarding and emotionally involving experience. I presume (maybe naively) that most of us listen to music for this reason.
..all those 'know-all cowards' proclaiming the wonders of digits are flipping one to real human experience....
Looking at a reproduction of the good old Mona Lisa on a computer is not the same as the real thing....unless you want a faded jigsaw in soft focus with off colours that is.....and the same applies to CD/MP3's and vinyl.....Art needs analogue!
So if people want to hoard whole catalogues of artists work then leave them to it. It's their loss. They miss the point of music...let them scour the web sucking up digital dirt.
The rest of us know how to feel.
Guy
It is unfortunate, quite unfortunate that these big companies can't see beyond the scope of their bulging wallets....The don't get, that if to reasonable means that they can allow us to do this, ie, use mp3's to sample music before we buy it, that they will profit never the less because most of use eventually go by the CD's anyway. And I feel in most cases that the artists suffer more at the hands of the BAC's** more than they do their company, when they are charged royalties and fees out the wahzoo....
:- Big Ass Company
I have seen us as consumers band together and trust each other enough to let people in on our ideas... and it works quite well....we need to start convincing BAC's that we have something to contribute and they need to listen.
They need to listen? So how are we gonna make em do that? Why is it that these companies (RIAA, MPAA et al) are allowed to get away with such bloody murder to make money at our expense?
**BAC
Nuff Respec'
DeICQLady
7D3 CPE
Artists to Napster: Drop dead!
.. And turn it off when the commercials come on. Am I a thief?
.. I listen to CD's at work, that do not belong to me.. Crime?
The RIAA is going through the same 'growing pains' that the MPAA went through with the introduction of the VCR.. Every new technology creates potential 'crimes' and causes shifts in revenue models. The rate of these changes seems to be happening a lot faster now than in the past, and it is difficult for large lumbering Corporate Megaliths to adapt quickly enough.
2cents..
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air and light and time and space
So now not being able to copy other peoples' work is the equivalent of slavery, is it? Here's another analogy, in no worse taste: Windows NT is really bad, just like killing six million Jews.
As for me, I think that current copyright law is blantantly unconstitutional
Well then, as for you, you're a moron. Not only is the copyright law not "unconstitutional", it's specifically mentioned in the constitution. Unlike all manner of other laws we have today, the US Constitution specifically states that Congress shall pass a law protecting the rights of the creators of useful works.
I can see the competition's gonna be fierce this year.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
When you talk about Napster stealing from legitimate artists, keep in mind that the artists in question - the people who actually make the music - make comparatively little money from royalties. Their money comes primarily from concerts, endorsements, and merchandising.
When you buy a CD, most of your money is going to the cost of Distribution - and if the means of distribution has been rendered obselete, we shouldn't have to keep paying for the old, outdated method, out of some sense of duty or tradition.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
the big deal is SHARING (files) is that idea not great ?
>>My suggestion to the idustry is to make music available free on the internet and earn money on advertisement. Barf. Haven't you seen enough advertising? I've had enough. If all entertainment came with advertising, subsidized at a rate *someone else* determines, then I'd be pretty pissed off. Take the model of television. The cost of watching an hour of programming is 15 minutes of ads. How much is your time worth? Was that hour of programming worth 15 minutes of wasted time? For me the answer is usually 'no', so I don't watch much television. So you want to let someone else determine how much of your time should be wasted in exchange for an hour of free music? If you get what you want you'll make that music unavailable to me. You're probably already thinking "just buy the CD if you don't want the ads". Right. Where can I buy a Seinfeld tape? That's right, it's not available (or at least the majority of television programming isn't). That's because there isn't money to be made selling the tape when the majority of people have nothing better to do than watch commercials, so they won't pay for it. I see the same thing happening to music if it's given away with ads. Barf, barf, barf. Enough advertising. No Thanks.
Historically, unauthorized copying has been revenue neutral for the recording industry. That is, home recording hasn't cost or earned them any money. Sales are lost when someone hasn't paid for a recording, and sales are gained when they are exposed to music they want to purchase. There are two recent technologies that threaten that balance. First, digital recording mediums have made owning The Real Thing less important. If you record to CD-R then the only thing you're missing is the liner notes. And I've seen some people solve that problem with a copying machine. Second, the Internet makes worldwide distribution possible. Now it's not just a couple friends that have access to your music. You can share it with *everyone*. I don't like anyone placing restrictions on my legitimate use of technology, but I also don't want making music to become unprofitable. Do you really think the Rolling Stones are gonna work for nothin'? Do you think having an advertisement on the page you downloaded their latest album from is fair compensation? I think not.
Napster, universities sued by Metallica
Yeah Napster is used mostly for finding and trading illegal mp3s.. Look at e.g. mp3 search engines, they're doing the exact same thing, or raid alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.* newsgroups or ftp sites or web sites hosting such files, not to mention all trading through irc/icq and whatever. So why aren't web providers, ISPs etc providing those newsgroups and everybody else giving access to such material equally responsible? Oh sure they can get away with not having knowledge of what is copyrighted and not, but Napster is not granted the same rights. Believe it or not, a very few songs *is* legal to spread like that, in fact Napster in itself isn't anymore illegal than any other ways to transfer files over the net, like everything else it can be used for good or evil, Napster can't read a file and tell if it's copyrighted or not, a file is a file is a file and Napster enables people to share those files, only the people sending them to the main index can tell if they're copyrighted or not (unless you want the central Napster index to contain a banlist of every possible way to name every copyrighted song, an impossible task). By what right would RIAA claim to have the right to prevent me from spreading legally distributable music through Napster? None. So the problem is the index. But I really don't understand how it is any different from e.g. a web page uploaded by me, or a newsgroup posting from me, if every machine was required to check all the contents passing through it for legality, there'd be no Internet. I'll tell you what pissed RIAA off about Napster: It's easy to use, easy to find those songs one wants, and very easy to point at as the big bad wolf, because it's the biggest index availible. In fact, by using wrapster some might have understood what this could be like, a place for people to share any kind of files simply, be it mp3s, warez, p0rn or anything else not *that* illegal.. by that I mean something that so many trades the police can't get any reasonable share of them. In theory there would be no problem to get a search warrant for the Napster index and get the IPs of all trading there, then get their caller ID from their respective ISPs and catch them all. The only problem is the cops wouldn't be done in this millennium, nor the next one, not to mention they couldn't put so many million people behind bars for practical reasons. The point I'm trying to make is that Napster is just the simplest target to hit, but even if they do take it out they're only hitting the tip of the iceberg, an iceberg growing bigger by the minute as people get faster connections and simpler solutions... Today a mp3 site is maybe 1000mb.. tomorrow 10gb, in a while 100gb with download speeds to match, they're fighting a losing war, and don't want to admit it. Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
This is how i see it. I love Napster, and I love Warez. Yes maybe I am a thief, but who the hell has enough money to buy all the freakin albums that come out, all the freakin $10000000000 dollar programs and the $50 dollar games released daily??? Please let me know (unless you are Bill Gates, I know you can afford them :) yes it is harmful to the bands and to the software industry, but I am addicted to it I can't change the way I am. Bands will just have to settle with only 2 Mercedes' and one giant house. Damn!
I am tired of hearing about this already. Not that I don't care, I do. I am just tired of corporations pretending like they care when they just want all the money they can get. How many times do we hear of a band that was the "next best thing" that always burns out. I think the Rolling Stones sell more albums today today then when they were new. Then again, maybe not. I still have a nice stack of Vinyl albums, and I have re-purchased them to have them on CD. Shouldn't I have been allowed to trade them in for the CD version, since I already had purchased the works? No, there is less money in that for them. How about MC Hammer (just for reference) I see how his ride went up and down, yet I beleive the record company made at least 10X the money he did from his works, did they help him, NO. He wasn't making the money for them anymore. That is how a band stays on MTV and in their favor. When you stop making the money for us, you are history. I am not part of the RIAA, I used to work at a law firm, and saw first hand how this buisness model works. After working to the bone (and sacrificing my life) I was let go when I was not needed for someone who was cheaper and less experienced. After, all the work I had done to raise standards and expand for more profits. When that model was in place, I was expendable. Same thing with the Record company. I still feel resentful when I was asked to work on a case from the IT perspective of CoolMail vs. SuSe. Napster is a tool, they are not hosting the mp3's or collecting them on any servers. It is the end user that is putting the MP3's out there. And, I cannot buy into the fact they are losing money. I don't have the link handy, but I remember that on /. it wa posted that the Record companies made more money this past year then the year before. Profits ROSE, almost 2 billion dollars I beleive, and this is still a problem? I thinkn the fact that an CD costs over $10 is the problem. Media bought at that bulk most come out to about .04 each. Pressing is not that large a cost. So the actual CD is not the issue. The amount they pay the artist isn't as well, as they are already tied to a contract, and the Record comapny usually BUYS these people for peanuts. It is all about demographics, not wheter the music is good. If I hear Bye, Bye, Bye one more time, I will break that person's radio. Face it, the music they are PUSHING, I do not like, and I wont buy it, nor will I want to acquire an MP3 version of it. They are not losing any money from my ability to get a copy it, from Napster, a friend, a radio, etc.... Trying to say that since copying occurs (it occurs without Napster, Gnutella, etc...) that they are losing my money, is bunch of crap. You can't make a buisness model based on the population that everyone buy it. Wouldn't MS then be based on 250 million copies sold in their buisness model? Parents make up the bulk of CD purchasing. I have a 12 year old Daughter. She tells me what CD's she wants, and My wife and I purchase them. And, from what I remember, Album and CD sales occur most between the 11-18 age range. And where does that money come from? The Parents. After age 18, you usually build your collection of music through about age 30, then, you don't have the time. Life takes over, Career, Marriage, Mortgage, etc.... Kids are what drive this industry. And beleive me, the parents foot the bill. I try to listen to new ROCK, and I am still shaking my head. Where are the Next Rolling Stones, Doors, Pink Floyd, etc... Is it my fault that a band's shelf life is not exceeding 3-5 years anymore? I thought Guns and Roses was going to have staying power, bu alcohol and drugs took care of that. Why aren't the record companies being proactive towards the Bands they make their living off of? Because it would minimize their profits. This is probably off topic, but the issue hear isn't Napster, Gnutella, AOL IM, et al, it is the fact that they don't control it at this point. It also is screaming at them that $15-18 for one or two songs is horrible. Then again, it doesn't matter, because we the parents buy them for our kids. I resent the fact that the DMCA is constantly referred to as NOT for companies like NAPSTER. If the laws don't apply for everyone, than it is a BAD law. I hope they win this, they actually deserve it. I say this because they are blanketing everyone as just pirating, but not saying that they made more money this past year than the year before, and it is a trend that continues. How much is enough? What is your proof of losing money? You made more profit, your sales are INCREASING, where is the loss? The fact that I won't buy a CD for myself that I dond't like, but since I could get it, it is a lose? just my .03 cents