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MP3.com Loses In Court
The Code Hog was among the first to write with the news that "CNBC is reporting that MP3.com lost its court case with RIAA; the court finding that MP3.com is infringing on 'thousands' of artists property." Alert readers like Szyzyg and SethJohnson contributed links to coverage on zdnet and on yahoo respectively.
The crux of this case (I believe) is not whether or not its legal for an end-user to listen to an MP3 of a CD that they own, but whether its legal for a company (such as MP3.COM) to *make* MP3's for redistribution to end-users, from original CD's.
It's not a case over whether or not you have a right to listen to MP3's of your own CD's. You *do* have a right to do that.
It's a case over whether or not MP3.COM can 'steal' (RIAA's terms, not mine) music from other CD manufacturers, for re-distribution. When you sign up for their service you are downloading MP3's of CD's you already own, but which were *made* by MP3.COM. This is the crux of the legal wrangling that RIAA is using to try to bring down the bull of MP3.COM, so to speak...
What this is more similar to, as a case, is radio stations. RIAA's clientele already have vast quantities of precedent for radio stations retransmitting their material, and there's a thing called a 'license agreement' that a radio network must agree to before it can broadcast the latest Britney song... RIAA is arguing that MP3.COM have violated copyrights, much the same way that a Pirate Radio station would have done, by broadcasting material for which they (MP3) haven't obtained a right to use from RIAA's clientele...
Now, it could be that after all of this, MP3 and RIAA go into some sort of licensing agreement which allows MP3 to make MP3's of RIAA's clientele's CD's, but more than likely this won't happen - RIAA is too bloodthirsty, and the music industry already full of hyena's, that this will probably just result in MP3.COM's downfall, sadly. It could be a simple matter, but alas - greedy pigs in the music industry don't see it that way, if they can't control it.
That's just my understanding of this lawsuit, so don't quote me, and please correct me if I'm wrong in assessing this.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
"I pirated your new album and really liked it. Here's five bucks. This is way more of a cut than you would have gotten from the record company. See how this could work? Now go tell your label they're moronic dinasaurs and your're sick of them picking at your and your fans' carcasses!"
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DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
They were distributing copyrighted material without a license. Even if they were sure that the users alreay owned the CD's, the legality is still very questionable. And with the availability of free ripping software, the usefulness of such a service is also rather questionable.
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MP3.com lost here--and rightfully so, I hate to say--because they were offering downloads of songs to customers who already owned the CDs of those songs. Well, that's providing a service based on distributing copies of someone else's IP. That's a service which, given the current tenor of copyright law in this country, only the owner of the IP would be entitled to offer. It's rather like, if a company were to offer free downloads of the full 6-disc SuSE distro including all the non-freeware programs, for anyone running that edition of SuSE. SuSE and the companies whose non-free programs are included would probably get very upset and sue, concerned about their ability to keep track of their IP since there are ways to fool the server into thinking you're running full SuSE whyen you're really not.
I don't think it's at all unfair to close this service down, since MP3.com can keep offering downloads of songs it *does* have a right to offer, such as from artists who've given permission, have contracts with them for downloads, etc. This was a very limited part of MP3.com's services which was ruled a violation.
Napster is an entirely different issue. Napster is a network, which allows users of the network to connect to each other and download stuff. Napster itself doesn't host songs on its own "site" like MP3.com's MP3 Anywhere or whatever it was called, was doing. So, it's very likely that Napster will be ruled some form of "common carrier" and therefore not liable for what its users do amongst themselves, since its network has a legitimate use in allowing users to distribute non-copyrighted sound files. To make Napster police its network to decide what is and is not copyright infringement would put an undue burden on Napster and similar networks, and is not what a judge would order. In fact, if a network does police itself, then it would become liable--but if it just provides an open service, it can be considered a common carrier. Just my 2 pence...
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
The market for games then was so small that one company - Microdeal of St Austell, Cornwall - published virtually all the games on the platform. They were all "ports" of Tandy CoCo games from the states. "ports" means they just patched some ROM addresses, since the machine really was a clone apart from some keyboard lines being switched and having a new ROM (written by a tiny little software company called Microsoft).
Now, anyone still using the Dragon 32 in 1986 was a real enthusiast. A lot of us had bought the disk drive expansion unit, at a cost of around $600, in order to speed up loading and saving our little BASIC programs.
The problem was, Microdeal wouldn't release their games on floppy disk. The market was "too small" - it was tape, or nothing.
I was a hacker, though, so I was capable of hacking the little games and putting them onto disk. Wow. I could fit 26 games onto a single 720K floppy. That was cool. But not everyone had my patience and experience cracking the "protection" they put on these games.
So little me, with my little fanzine, decided to offer a service to people. "Send me your tapes," I said, "and I shall put them onto disk for you, at a cost of only 50p per game." You see, I wasn't in it for the money, I just wanted to help people out. I was just a kid. Anyway, I already had 90% of the games on disk already so those jobs would be easy ;) In fact, it seemed silly to ask for actual tapes, so I just said "send your original inlays, to prove you own the game, and I shall send you a disk with the game on it."
Quite similar to MyMP3.com, really.
Well, Microdeal had a fit. Their President wrote me a very indignant letter, saying I was pirating the games and would I really check people had the games before sending them, and claiming that I was being immoral in offering this service.
Me?! Immoral?! All you guys have to do is write the things onto disk and upgrade people for a couple of pounds ($3.20) but you don't bother; you expect people to use these old-fashioned tapes forever.
(My legal sophistication was a little lacking in those days).
Anyway, I wasn't about to go up against some huge monolithic company like Microdeal, so I withdrew the service, with a tear in my eye.
I guess the point is that this service seems fine and dandy and reasonable, but legally it's on thin ice. I'm a little saddened, but not entirely surprised, at this court decision.
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It's a
-- Danny Vermin
I guess I must not be as smart as a lawyer, cuz I just don't get it! How could a service that allows you to listen to an mp3 of music that you already own be infringing copyright? my.mp3 only lets you hear what you've already shown it that you own, or am I getting something wrong here?
Sure, you could borrow a friend's CD and add that I suppose, but you could also make a tape of it and play it in your car. That doesn't make tapes illegal, just the act of dubbing. I don't know of anyway to get music that you didn't pay for through my.mp3.
But hell, let's all keep heading down this road and keep fighting technology we don't understand. Maybe we should stick to something simple like banging two rocks together to make music. Of course then someone would copyright rocks, and if you tried to play the same rocks in a different place you'd get sued.
-MadDreamer
-Mad Dreamer
http://www.modernhumorist.com/propaganda/mp3.html