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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 . "
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.
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
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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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!
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
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.
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.
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.
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--
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?
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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."
Here's my DeCSS mirror. Where's yours?
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
> 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"
> what does the RIAA get out of stopping Napster?
> People have always been copying tapes, taping
> shows
Yup...and the RIAA tried to put a stop to
that stuff to. They arte the reactionaries.
Whenever new technology comes out that could
give the public the ability to do things only
RIAA memebers and few others could do (ie, most
people can't stamp out vinal...until the past
few years couldn't make CDs...) they react
by trying to stop it.
Just look at the rukus over casset tapes when they
first became available and econimical for people
to use for copying music. Its the same thing all
over again.
Personally, I think that copyright is an outdated
system that is no longer socially useful, and
simply serves as a baton with which large
corperations can use to bully people and keep
everyone else at the bottom of the "IP Hill".
It was designed to help authors in a time when
mass production and distribution was out of
reach for all but a few people, ie those who
could afford a printing press. It was designed
to stop publishers from taking authors works,
selling them and not paying the author (the
original meaning of "pirate")
Now that technology is rapidly bringing mass
publication into the relm of the average
person, its time to abandon these outdated
ideas. If the current day media powerhouses
lose money because of it, then it was because
they couldn't adapt and were unfit for the world.
Now of course, the RIAA and record companies see
this happening. Like any organism facing
facing possible extinction, they are fighting to
remain alive.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Easy there tex.
A service provider is one who provides a service.
My phone company is a service provider. So is my
dry cleaner.
OR...
service provider != ISP necessarily
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
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
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.
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
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
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
Besides, as I have insisted all along, IE isn't "free", even in the economic sense. It costs $0 but it limits my choices, which is a non-tangible cost. It also seemed, to me, to make the underlying system even more unstable, with real costs, too.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Actually, this is being done by Indiana University.
I have great faith in fools - self confidence my friends call it. - Edgar Allan Poe