Slashdot Mirror
Metallica Wants To Ban 335,435 Napster Users
charper writes: "News.com is reporting that a firm hired by Metallica has fingered more than 335,000 Napster users (who were allegedly) trading their music. They're seeking to have them banned from Napster. " Check out our original piece, and remember - you can always PayLars!
Version 0.01b
by "Open Source Man"
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Who is Natalie Portman?
where have you been? natalie portman is a hot young actress with a firm rump and pouting, teen breasts. oh yeah... and she goes to some college or something. you can find more information (including photos!) at the natalie portman web site. another good source of natalie portman information is slashdot.
"pouting, teen breasts"? You mean she's jailbait?
well, the age of consent in new york (her home state) is 17. natalie portman will be 19 in the summer of 2000. do you really think you'll ever be in a position such that it matters anyway?
What's the deal with Slashdot and Natalie Portman?
slashdot is a web-site devoted to technical news and discussion. natalie portman is a hot young actress. does that clear it up for you?
Is "Natalie Portman" her real name. If not, what is?
"portman" is her grandmother's maiden name. and if i knew her real name, i wouldn't tell you.
OK. You are walking down a street on a warm spring day. You come up on a man standing outside a building. The man is holding a clipboard. He sees you and convinces you to come inside to participate in a study.
You follow him inside and he leads you to a large room. The room is empty, save for a table. At the table is sitting a gorgeous blonde. The man sits you down in a chair next to her. Between the two of you sits a large cheeseburger. You are quite happy to see the man leave.
Suddenly, you hear a voice over a loudspeaker, "which do you choose? The Wendy's triple cheeseburger or Heather?"
You're not quite sure you heard that correctly, "huh?"
The voice is clearly annoyed, "you can have one or the other but not both. So which is it? The Wendy's triple cheeseburger? Or Heather?"
You look at the Wendy's triple cheeseburger, succulent and dripping with juices... mhmhmhmhmhmhmhmhmhmhmhmhmh.
You look at Heather, smiling at you as she twirls her hair... mhmhmhmhmhmhmhmhmhmhmhmhmh.
so... the moment of truth... which would you choose?
natalie portman, of course. it amazes me how many people get this wrong.
I don't see what's so great about Natalie Portman. Why don't you obsess over an actress that's really hot. like blah, blah, blah.
write about your own fantasies. i'm not your personal court pornographer.
Whatever happened to Drew Barrymore?
i think she's dating tom green.
Do you have any life at all?
no.
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thank you.
So, lets assume that I was a Metalica fan. Next lets also postilate that I use Napster. Now, being a huge fan, lets say that I own every Metallica cd. Now, as an owner of Metalica's work, i am allowed to own a copy of say Enter Sandman in cd format, mp3 format, grilled cheese format. Lets also assume that I am lazy. Being lazy, I am not eager to convert all of my Metalica cd's to mp3, but would rather just take a copy from another user who is in the same situation as myself. Surely trading of this manor between two valid owners of the music cannot be illegal? And whats with the 335,000 users? I would be willing to bet that there are not that many people sharing Metalica. And how did they download all those songs to verify that they were Metalica songs? I didn't see anyone downloading any of my Metalica songs - oops
The BEST of the BEST of the BEST of Metallicaca!
...And Justice For Lars
Napster Of Puppets
The Lawsuit Remains
Money, and Nothing Else Matters
Wherever I Make Royalty
Enter Howard King
Free Mp3 For The Dumb
Die, Die My Reputation
Deadfan
Napster Dead Forever
Subpoenad Baby
Through the Server
My Friend of NetPD
To Live Is To Sue
Fight Fans With Fire
The Mp3 That Should Not Be
Disposable Fans
No Royalties
Damage, Inc.
Wasting My Hate
Sad But True
Seek And Destroy
Kill 'Em All
The case of tools like Napster, Gnutella and son on is not anything like the case of software
I beg to differ. Software can be free, and it can be commercial. It's up to the developer to decide. The same is true for artists. There's nothing stopping an artist from making their work publicly and freely available (as Chuck D has done). Metallica doesn't want to make their music free, and that's their choice, but that doesn't prevent other artists from doing so.
And given that the creators of Napster have technically broken the law
Anti-copying laws were put in place to stop people from PROFITING from someone else's work. In this case, the music is being traded for free between fans of the band. Napster users are in no way profiting from the trading. And as many have already reported, there has been no drop in CD sales. Quite the contrary.
In addition, CD sales for bands like Metallica are just a small percentage of their revenues. Tours, pictures, t-shirts, collectibles, videos, etc bring in a huge amount of cash for the company, and these commodities aren't as easily traded.
they are being generous by merely asking them to block the users which have committed theft against Metallica
But what about artist who are ENCOURAGING Napster users to trade their music. Think of a struggling artist who is just trying to get noticed. Napster is a fantastic distribution outlet for their work. If you ban those 335,000 users (and any others who follow), that artist may have lost his big chance.
it's you that are in the wrong if you engage in theft at the cost of hard-working artists trying to make a living.
Unfortunately, this is true, we are in the wrong. However, Metallica is hardly living in poverty. They absolutely have the right to sue Napster to do something about the trading of their work, but their damage is claim is groundless. Morally, they have tons of cash, and don't need any more, they're just being greedy. Legally, they're going to need to prove they've lost revenue due to Napster trading, and that is going to be difficult to do.
bh
Are these users right? No. Stealing is wrong, and yes, they are stealing from the artist. However, the music industry isn't right either. They are trying to restrict the way that you can listen to your music. The people that buy music have found a way to get what they want and the record companies have been unwilling to provide. Most people don't want something for nothing. However, they don't want to be suckered into buying a whole CD for one good song, and they also want a viable means to get music from one place to another without physically carrying it. They will pay for this service, but the record companies don't want to provide it. I would buy a lot more music if say, Columbia had every song on every back catalog item available on their website for a dollar. It would cost them next to nothing, but they won't do it, because they are afraid of piracy. They are trying to protect their cash cow, and the consumer is tired of it. That's why you see the proliferation of MP3s, Napster, Gnutella and the like.
I want to be able to access my music collection from anywhere. Currently, I have coded all my albums into MP3s, and they reside on my server, which is on a DSL line. I can get my music from home, from work, on vacation, anywhere but the car, and I'd bet that's coming pretty soon. Best of all, I'm not putting wear and tear on my CDs, and I'm not subjecting them to theft. Consumers like MP3 because it's small enough to download, and you don't have to jump through hoops just to listen to it on a different computer than the one you downloaded it on.
Do I own MP3s that I haven't bought? Yes. But, I can honestly tell you that they are MP3s I would not have bought anyway. I would have listened to the radio and waited for them to come on until I got tired of them. As it is, I listen to them on mp3 until I get tired of them, then I delete them. Ultimately, the same difference. I sample a lot of music this way as well. A friend turned me on to Drain STH, I downloaded some mp3s off Napster, decided I liked them, bought all of their CDs. That's quite a bit of money in their pocket, and it's because, not in spite of, Napster. I still buy as much music as I ever did, but now I don't have to worry so much about being screwed, I actually probably buy more. Granted, not everyone is going to do this, but enough do and will. I keep thinking back to the movie industry trying to ban VCRs because it would kill their revenue. Instead, it only increased it.
Now, as far as Metallica is concerned, they are making a big, big mistake. They have basically driven a nice big wedge between them and their fans. Who do you think is trading Metallica mp3s? Fans. People that don't like Metallica aren't downloading Metallica, just like I'm not using Napster to download Lawrence Welk. I'll even wager that most of those fans that are downloading the music own at least a few Metallica CDs. I'll wager even further that most of those that are downloading the songs without owning the CDs don't have the money to buy the CD anyway. I'll also bet that a lot of the songs being traded are songs you can't buy or are unavailable in your area.
I just got done reading "Kiss and Sell" a book about Kiss, and one chapter stuck in my mind. It's the one where Kiss sued their record company. They really weren't interested, but one of their agents passed it off as a good vs. evil battle (Kiss vs. Nazis, actually), and suddenly Kiss was all fired up and ready to go. ...and they lost.... horribly. I'll bet Metallica got suckered in in much the same way. Their agents showed them one side of the issue, and basically told them that all of these users are stealing their music, and anyone with an internet connection can get in on the act! On top of that, they probably told them that if they don't stop it now, everyone's going to be doing it.
So, without thinking about why or who is doing this, they join in the big fight for what's right(TM). Eventually, the record company is going to have to wake up and embrace the new technology, or they will be run over by it. It has happened time and again. MP3 is just the latest freight train to roll through. It may not last to the end of it. But, something will. You can bet on that. Think about it. We're raising a generation of consumers who don't mind paying for bits and bytes. They don't need that piece of physical evidence that they bought something anymore. I'm a bit old and I still like holding the real deal, be it a printed book or a pressed CD. However, I see the younger generation not caring so much. They see the electronic media as better because it never gets stained or torn or broken or melted or scratched -- it's always pristine, and if it does get corrupted you just copy it back from your archives. Think if you could access your entire CD collection, along with your movie collection and your library from anywhere. You could be chilling on the beach with a device no bigger than your cell phone, listening to the 1000s of albums you have stored at home. Think it can't happen? Think again. Bandwidth is cheaper than ever, and soon it won't matter where your bits are stored, you'll have nearly instaneous access to them from anywhere. If the record companies keep fighting the consumer on this (and the consumer ultimately gets what he wants) they will find themselves slowly twisting in the wind. As for me, well, I think Metallica has finally alienated me for good. Goodbye Metallica, it was nice knowing you...
I bet they're only doing a search for the word 'Metallica' to finger people. I'm going to put up a song I'll compose called "Metallica Sucks" and another one called "Metallica-induced Blues" and make them available on Napster.
If I get on that (ban) list, I'll sue for defamation. I'm not violating copyright, after all. It'll be MY song.
Any bets they're not actually checking the contents of the files that users are sharing?
Do you really think Metallica has, in the past year, seen a drop in the money they receive from record sales? And now they have taken it upon themselves to combat the evil of MP3's?
I think not. Most artists are happier with the most exposure, not the most money.
Here's an alternative possibility:
1) The RIAA, which represents the major record labels, has acheived a dubious reputation with MP3 users everywhere. Anything they do or say about MP3's is most likely to be instantly seen in a negative light by the computing community.
2) Some RIAA jackass representative comes up with this brilliant idea: "Hey, let's have our musicians come out against MP3's! They can say that it isn't about money at all; it's all about the art! They will have much more credibility with the public than us money-grubbing assholes!"
3) The same jackass goes to Metallica headquarters and says "Hey, could you guys say the words right here on this card? The legal department will take care of the rest. If you don't, I'd hate to have this issue come up again when your label is deciding whether to keep you guys on."
This seems a lot more likely than the artists being mad that more people are hearing their music. They don't get money every time their songs are played on the radio.
When did Metallica get old and inflexible? the most annoying thing about this is that they're one of the few bands that could tell their record company what do do with itself, walk away, and then exploit the hell out of this new medium.
Somebody needs to track them down on tour and just have a long conversation with 'em. And take a cluestick, just in case.
Please. As if it wasn't bad enough that Slashdot & co pandered to Kevin Mitnick's every need, now we have to hear about some poor little 31337 Napster users who broke the law and now have to pay for it.
Since, we all "represent the Open Source movement", let me represent by saying that not all of us are die-hard anarchists, and some of us are actually in favor of law and order! Crazy, but true.
What it comes down to is that these people ripped of Metallica, and now it's time to pay the piper. I have no sympathy for the subhuman zealots who think that they have a right to everything for free because they once installed a copy of Red Hat. That the Open Source Movement seemingly supports these hardened criminals is ludicrous. No wonder no one takes you seriously, you seem like a bunch of children screaming "Mine! Mine! All mine!". Most Open Source Advocates have never produced any art or IP contributions (and pro-Linux zealotry on Slashdot doesn't count), so how can you be expected to understand the issues? You commonly accuse the media of being biased, but consider yourselves free from prejudice. Get over yourselves.
Free Software does not mean Free Music. Criminals go to jail. Plain and simple.
Despite what RMS and his followers might like us all to think, information does not want to be free - information doesn't really say a lot at all. The case of tools like Napster, Gnutella and son on is not anything like the case of software, and /.ers who blindly apply the same rules should sit down and think about the issue before spouting psuedo-socialist dogma.
Music artists put a lot of time and effort into producing a work of art which they then allow the general public to enjoy. That is the important point here - they allow the public to listen to. As it is their work, they decide how they want people to obtain and use said work, and anyone that believes otherwise is just condoning theft in one of its many forms.
Record companies are there to represent artists and to provide them with a range of services which they'd find difficult to get on their own - marketing, production, distribution and often nowadays, legal representation. Sure, they make money from doing this, but we live in a capitalist society where making money is how our economy functions.
If an artist doesn't like how their music is being distributed then they have the right to stop this distribution, and in this case Metallica have chosen to exercise this right. And given that the creators of Napster have technically broken the law, they are being generous by merely asking them to block the users which have committed theft against Metallica. If anything, this action is a lot more soft than it could have been considering the sums of money which have been lost to the hordes of Napster pirates.
So before everybody gets up in arms about this, remember, it's you that are in the wrong if you engage in theft at the cost of hard-working artists trying to make a living.
Fair warning to all, anything coming from my name during that chat is NOT me.
Gotta go come up with a new account name..
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Just lurking, thanks!
Common sense dictates that if you want to establish a good customer base that you should not alienate your fans, especially by threatening lawsuits against the same very people who bought your albums in the first place!
Only David Bowie got away with alienating his fans back in the late 80's when he formed his band Tin Machine, a pretty heavy, dark metal band. This was right after he had managed to sellout stadium after stadium and got to where he was on his own terms. (A T-shirt he was spotted wearing after many fans complained of his new music venture stated "Fuck you, I'm in Tin Machine.") Fans were expecting him to put out more songs like China Girl and instead they got alot of heavy metal/industrial.
Fuck Ajit Pai
I'll point you to my suggestion from the MP3.com article. If all these musicians want to be so bitchy, why not put your money where your mouth is?
Check out the napigator server list...
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
Think of it like this: When you bought the CD, say Metallica's MoP, you purchased license #12345 of MoP. However, you are downloading a recording of MoP with license #45678, for which you have not purchased a license. No, they are not the same thing, because #45678 may be the superdeluxe extra feature edition of MoP, for example...
So, the RIAA can't complain if you encode MP3's, make CD or MiniDisc copies of MoP #12345, for your own use. Distributing this would be a license violation.
This is why my.mp3.com is getting nailed to the wall, too.
"It only takes 20 years for a Liberal to become a Conservative without changing one idea."
ttyl
Farerll
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Does the agreement say WHEN? Read the 'contract'. Napster might be perfectly safe saying "OK! Our banning-person works 8 hour days, so give us a couple years for your 335 thousand." It's got to take some time to enter all that in. See in the usage agreement if it says anything about how quickly the bans are to be implemented. This is a lovely example of how the deranged, shrinkwrap, click-wrap UCITA usage agreement madness might actually work in our favor. That agreement is going to be pretty literally interpreted- don't think Metallica are going to be able to get interpreted as what it SHOULD mean, only what it literally means.
Oh, man, what _is_ this world coming to when the above isn't a joke? To think that "I promise not to sue my own fans" is a SELLING point O_O *rofl!*
Yes! I promise not to sue you, and for an additional low low price of $5.99 I'll still not sue you, plus you can have a CD, plus I won't drive over and set fire to your house! (I don't have a car anyway :) ) oh my oh my :)
- Easy: point and click
- High quality- 128K but NO skips or incompletes
- Legal
- Fast- you get the music immediately.
What's the fifth? You paying a few bucks a song for a download. Sorry man- I sympathise, tho- if you _want_ to be compelled to pay a few bucks per download when my entire albums are only $6, how about going and impulsively buying all my albums? I am afraid I am not willing to coerce you into it, thoughWhen you connect with Napster you get one of about 40 odd servers. So you only see the other people on that server...
;-) no sense of netiquette.. sheesh..
(That's what I heard).
What I would like to know if Metallica got kicked for using a bot...
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Simon
I have to agree, I didn't expect to see come from Metallica either...
Time for a technical question. Does anyone know how 'fingering' a user on Napster works? Can it be stopped/detected at the server. If so, then Napster could then enforce thier "no bots on the service" rule. Right back atcha'!
--
Simon
Make a contribution and you'll get a better seat!
--Metallica, Leper Messiah
--Threed
The Slashdot Sig Virus was foiled before it could spread.
This once again exposes the real problem with Napster, which is that it's a big central target which can be blocked, can be sued, and can be coerced into blocking users or groups of users.
There are ways around some of that, of course, and it's terribly unlikely that all 335,435 IP addresses these guys supposedly identified will be trackable -- on the other hand, given the legal climate that exists around this stuff identifying the users isn't the RIAA's mission, just banning as many IP addresses as possible. Still, this is a big problem.
All of which leads to the real solution, a distributed system like Gnutella. With no central server and no real way to track what any specific user is searching for, it's a much more private solution. Granted it takes more bandwidth, but it's impossible to shut down in this way.
Could never prove it. They'll just claim that an album is a single work of art. Then you'll have to prove that it isn't. You'd have to get access to internal communications and whatnot in order to show that the album contents are usually decided by business concerns rather than the artist having free reign to create a work independently of business concerns. Even then it might not be enough to convince a court that an album isn't a single work of art regardless of how or why it was created.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
You're right. There are people on the RIAA's side that firmly believe that they are right. They will also do everything in their power to see to it that their view of what is right is enforced on everyone.(as they've done for years and succeeded for the most part)
Given that, I think my opinion is just as valid as their opinion. I firmly believe I'm right. I must also do everything in my power to make sure that my view is enforced. Otherwise I'm allowing the RIAA to decide what is right and wrong.
You see the dilemma? If we're both convinced we're right, we end up with a fight. That's where we're at right now. The fight has been joined in the courts. Maybe it will be decided there, maybe not. I don't think the courts are where it will ultimately be decided. I think the fans are sick of getting screwed. They want to support the artists they like. They just don't like the current system where they have to get screwed over in order to support them.
If the RIAA was so concerned about the artists, they wouldn't be making them sign their work over for 35-40 years, or now even forever. If the RIAA was so concerned about the artists, they would have been devising new methods of distributing music that wouldn't require as much overhead cost so that the fans pay less and the artists get more. But, it all makes sense when you realize that the RIAA doesn't give a rat's ass about the artists as long as they can exploit them and keep raking in the cash.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Well I think the best thing to do would be for the artists to sell their albums online for maybe 80-$1.00. You could also get individual songs for maybe 10.(their contracts may forbid this - if so, they need to get new ones)
If an artist did that, I'd consider paying. As is, all the for-sale music online costs the same as a real CD. WTF, it costs them about $0.00 to distribute it over the net, so they should sell it cheap or not be surprised when no one pays.
And maybe they just paid for this music? Or maybe they wanted to hear the music *before* they buy it - not after? Or maybe they don't have this record in their local store? Seems that you just accused about 335000 people in a crime without any evidence, just because some greedy pop-idols want to pick on them (obviously, they got bored of other dull things like writing songs and performing - suing seems sooo much more fun for them!)
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Most Open Source Advocates have never produced any art or IP contributions This alone is more than enough to identify the poster as a plain old flame-generator. No point in discussion with people ignoring facts and just sticking labels.
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
You're creating a bunch of assumptions that are very incorrect.
#1) Slashdot community member = Free software advocate. Wrong. Slashdot is a news for nerds site with lots of differing opinions. Lots of people like Linux. That doesn't mean they use it for religous reasons. The "open source" movement is about PRAGMATICS, not religon or philosophy.
#2) People who support a system of intellectual property are supporting the greedy and rich. Wrong. The greedy and rich are not the benefactors of a strong property system: SOCIETY as a whole is benefitted by it because it provides economic incentive to perform productive work.
Some say "art should not be paid for". This argument is so shallow, it's surprising that people still use it. Without compensation, art wouldn't proliferate, would it? Not because of lack of love, but because of a lack of time & commitment. Perhaps, one would think, that if a particularily good artist comes along with something in his/her spare time, people would throw money at them to produce more? Oh, but now, we're back at square one: paying money for art, if the market wants it. And that's the kicker: clearly, the market wants it, because, uh, they're still paying for the books, CD's, and movies that people create today.
The laws of private property and contract, whether tangible or intellectual, have historically been the most successful economic policies to stimulate a free market. The socialist "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" creed is a wonderful moral fantasy, but cannot coincide with economic reality. There is no free lunch, even with intellectual works.
Unlimited free copying is justifiable IF AND ONLY IF there can be guarantee of remuneration to the original creator of that work if so desired. Only then can a "sharing" community exist while the market continues to foster the determinants of economic success: productivity and innovation.
Laws change. Economic laws don't. If you can come up with a good way of promoting free copying while preserving remuneration to the artist, become an entrepreneur, not an activist...
-Stu
and never mind that noise you heard,
It's just the lawyers beneath your bed,
You use napster so you'll soon be DEAD!!!!!
Exit your rights!
Enter armed knights!
Taaaaake the cops hand.....
off to your arraignment ladd!
(Muhahahaha!)
This idea is how these MP3 pirates are currently justifying their actions (of course, being pirates, they're doing it without actually sending any money!). But it doesn't work.
... oh wait... all that infrastructure - might as well have a record label!
One of the reasons these artists have record companies behind them is to shield them from all the money involved - so that they just get a paycheck going into their bank at the end of the year/quarter/month/whatever. I can't honestly see a major act thinking it's really cool that they get 10,000 snail mails a month with $5 in the envelope. That would just drive you insane. You'd need a secretary, and an accountant, and people to open all the mail, and
Then you could potentially streamline it: build a web site that accepts payments... but wait, someone has to build the web site, pay for a Verisign certificate, market the site, pay for advertising, maintain the site, oh wait... all that infrastructure - might as well have some other company do all that, and they can take a percentage of the profits...
You see, the infrastructure thats in place is there for a reason. It appeared for a reason. It may not be perfect, but stealing copyrighted materials isn't going to change that infrastructure.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
All they have proof of is that people have files on their computers with the same names as Metallica songs. I don't think that the name alone is copy protected. Unless they download an MP3 from each of the defendants or snoop it in transit, I think they have nothing but scare tactics.
Then again I'd be happy if commercial artists crack down on digital copying as long as it doesn't affect the ability of independent bands to release their own MP3s under a more lenient distribution agreement. Perhaps it's time for a GPL for music, by which artists who care more about art than money can share their work with eachother and with their fans.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
It's not hard to get a list of people who trade Metallica mp3s? OK then, just how would you suggest doing that? Just off the top of my head, the closest I could come up with is doing a search for 'metallica' and writing down everyone who had it available for trade. Unfortunately, according to my experience with Napster, it is just as likely for metallica_unforgiven.mp3 to be command.com renamed as it is for it to be an actual mp3. This means that one would have to download all the Metallica mp3s available to test them to see if they actually are Metallica mp3s -- quite a boring task when you're testing over 300000 people.
On a low quality CD-ROM drive (in other words, 99% of the drives out on the market), there is no way to control precisely from what point an audio packet is read. One consequence is that two different attempts at audio extraction will almost certainly start from different offsets, resulting in two audio extractions that differ by a shift of bits. If this shift is accounted for, the two extractions should be exactly the same.
Note that positioning inaccuracies in the middle of reading a track can be corrected, simply by comparing the result with the previous read and scanning for any overlap of data. This process is known as "jitter correction." However, there is no way to correct inaccuracies at the start of a read, since there is no previous data to compare against.
Different drives have different statistical distributions of offsets, which explains the differences that you report when comparing copies extracted with different drives. Again, up to shifting, the two copies should be the same. If they aren't, at least one of the drives is defective.
It's very true that two wildly different copies can sound exactly the same to human ears, but on any half-decent CD-ROM hardware every extracted copy of a track should be identical except for the offsets mentioned above.
1) What's the substantial difference between Napster and old-media cassette tape copying?
Scale. Giving a tape to a friend is one thing; you typically know the recipient, and it costs you time and money to prepare the tape, so you can only do it in small quantities. Putting MP3s on Napster is another; then anyone in the world can search for them and download them. That and a cable modem can allow you to distribute your favourite CDs to thousands of strangers automatically. I'd say there's a big difference between that and making a tape for a friend.
4) Does Metallica or Electra Records have any plans in the works to offer music online? Do they have any ideas to offer the Internet Generation other than a Luddite-like prohibitionist stance?
They're working on SDMI and such. (And wasn't it Universal Music, not Elektra (a Warner label)? I believe Universal actually have their own encrypted downloadable format.)
Metallica aren't goth; they're more hessian/bogan with a touch of 90s grunge for the marketability. You must have gotten them confused with Guns'n'Roses or someone.
Owning a CD is no defense; well, it wasn't in the mp3.com case anyway. Fair use does not apply under the DMCA, because it's a law bought by the copyright cartels.
Maybe that's the reason for the delay in introducing DVD-Audio; they're trying to work out how to include UCITA-compliant click-wrap licenses with audio DVDs.
I used to be a Metallica fan back in the days of Ride the Lightning MOP and Kill'em all. I bought EVERY SINGLE one of the CDs tapes and some rare stuff released in other countries. Back then I was just a kid...I remember trying to go to one of their concerts and had to PLEAD with my parents to go see them. I eventually got to go after my parents forked out $80 for festival seating. Therefore I think it is complete crap that they are suing napster and trying to bully users into not using it anymore. If I bought the CD ( 4 times in the case of Kill'em all because of theft or defects ) I feel I have the right to download it from napster if I'm at work and want to listen to it instead of lugging the damn CD with me everywhere I go. Screw Metallica and screw anyone else trying to fight the wave MP3's. They are here to stay and there isn't anything that the RIAA or Metallica or any OTHER band they start puppeting for their cause can do about it. And just as a note LARS don't you think the record companies are selling your "ART" as a comodity you moron. BTW I doubt very much 100 years from now you'll see gallaries for Metallica's art.
======== In the future, everything will be artificial. ========
Well Larson should note that he hasn't released new Far Sides in a fairly long time, and that many of the books were reprints of comics in other books. I don't buy the same thing twice 'cos the label is different.
But I'd buy a _new_, _good_ Far Side book in a heartbeat.
-- 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.
Do realize that copyrights are directly opposed to the (arguably more important) freedom of speech. You are curtailing my freedom of speech when I want to say something you just said (which was copyrighted).
At any rate, copyrights are not inherent rights, they're plainly artificial and their purpose (at least in the US) is NOT for artists to control their work, nor for them to make money. The point is to encourage the creation of work which will, after a limited time being held by the artist, enter the public domain.
People don't _deserve_ compensation for copyrighted material. It's just an incentive to create more stuff. Copyrighted material is only truly valuable when it enters the public domain and can serve as the foundation for many other works, as well as being enjoyed independently. Copyrighted materials hinder the creation of new works.
-- 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.
Maybe Metallica is just disappointed. They monitor napster for a period of time, and find out that the total number of people who wanted to listen to their songs (for FREE, no less) was about 300K - and that includes people who get songs they don't really care about listening to just so they have them (think people who collect warez).
So they're lashing out at Napster to ease their own pain at being a band that nobody really listens to anymore. Oh the torment of growing old!
-- Rick
Just asking.
--
you should read everything on the internet as if it had "but I'm probably talking out of my ass" appended to it.
I have 50 bucks saying Metallica's lawyers are pouring over the resulting document now, making sure it is water tight before we're allowed to read what they really said...
Multiply that number again when/if other bands join, and soon there will be significant load and administrative hassles for Napster.
Metallica's little trip is not aimed at the users IMHO, it is aimed at harassing Napster. The more work and trouble they can cause Napster the better.
If I have legitamately bought Win2k and create a backup of it (in case my CD is damaged) and I place this backup on Napster (where it is publiclly accessible), i am pretty certain no law court is going to hesitate to determine that you are infringing copyright.
I'm no lawyer, but I think the crux of the matter is that you are allowing material to be traded in a public manner and that is where you would get in trouble.
Yes I will agree with you on that point.
Metallica needs to get with the Internet age, as do the rest of the millionaires whining about their intellectual property being pirated."
This kind of attitude worries me - since when is it a crime to be rich?!? Just because someone has something that you don't, doesn't mean that you can help yourself to what they have either directly or indirectly.
I suspect a lot of people who are arguing that this is not copyright infringement are simply into self-denial. Basically, they like their free music and want to keep it.
I've heard the argument that they didn't get it free, they wouldn't have bought it in the first place and I will conceede that this argument has some merit.
However, I would argue that there is a significant amount of music which is traded which will never be bought as a result of entire albumns being available for downloads.
Truth is, a lot of those people already probably spend a bunch of their hard earned money on Metallica music already, not to mention t-shirts, concerts, and jimmy hats.
And I would say that there is a lot more that don't.
I have lived in a Uni hall of residence where MP3 trading was widespread and epidemic and I can assure you that people where downloading entire albums rather than buying. In fact the common overheard comment was, 'Who needs to buy CDs now when you can get them free off the Internet'.
I don't know what the solution is and I'm not offering one. Nor am I saying that what Metallica has done is right.
BUT, to defend the trafficing of MP3s using your arguments simply doesn't hold any water IMHO.
Basically, they have 'attacked' Napster using Napsters own policy, that is, they will eject any user who infringes copyright.
By submitting 335,000 names, Metallica has accomplised two things:
- potentially scared users who thought they were anonymous
- created an administrative hassle for Napster
No doubt Metallica can afford to keep the NetPD firm indefinitely fingering each Napster user and submitting their name to Napster. If this is the case, Napster is going to be bogged down removing accountsAnd on a secondary note, if Metallica wanted to directly sue copyright infringers, can the NetPD firm supply enough info to confirm the computer from which it came and hence could Metallica sue an individual based on monitored Napster use? If so, this would be incredibly damaging to the user base of Napster as I am pretty certain that many users would shy away if they thought there was the remotest possibility that they could be sued.
Just my 2c worth at midnight :)
It appears to obey the law of fives:
:)
;)
3+3+5+4+3+5 = 23
23 is of course a very important number in of itself, but we also then get
2+3 = 5
Hrhmm...Metallica involved with the occult? NEVER.
PS: the following was an attempt at humour if you don't get it i suggest you start out with The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson. It has a lot of good refrences. of course d|i|s|i|n|f|o|r|m|a|t|i|o|n isn't a bad place to check out either
SgtPepper
hail eris
BTW what is the net worth of the guy who founded Napster? Talk about being filthy rich, he has more than 99% of all the Major label artists who are complaining.
Hey moron, I guess you missed a side effect of that, it would make it very difficult for end users to find Metallica songs using Napster, just what Metallica wants and asked Napster to do before filing the lawsuit, filter out Metallica from the servers.
Actually you would make them all very happy since end users looking for Metallica, and Dr Dre wouldn't be able to find them either. Effectively filtering them, which is what they asked Napster to do in the first place.
This is from Steve Albini, the recording engineer (don't ever call him a producer) for The Pixies, The Wedding Present, and Bush, who paid his bills for years. Steve has a sliding pay scale, he will record good poor bands for no more than joe schmoe studio (in his own state of the art studio) and charge major labels bank to record crap like Bush.
He isn't a fan of the record industry, but he shows insight as to how much things really cost. Also the artists aren't makeing any money.
Some of Your Friends are Already This Fucked
by Steve Albini
from The Baffler issue #5
Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always
end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about
four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with
runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends,
some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine
a faceless industry lackey at the other end, holding a fountain pen and a
contract waiting to be signed.
Nobody can see what's printed on the contract. It's too far away, and
besides, the shit stench is making everybody's eyes water. The lackey shouts
to everybody that the first one to swim the trench gets to sign the
contract. Everybody dives in the trench and they struggle furiously to get
to the other end. Two people arrive simultaneously and begin wrestling
furiously, clawing each other and dunking each other under the shit.
Eventually, one of them capitulates, and there's only one contestant left.
He reaches for the pen, but the Lackey says, "Actually, I think you need
a little more development. Swim it again, please. Backstroke."
And he does, of course.
A&R Scouts
Every major label involved in the hunt for new bands now has on staff a
high-profile point man, an "A&R" rep who can present a comfortable face to
any prospective band. The initials stand for "Artist and Repertoire,"
because historically, the A&R staff would select artists to record music
that they had also selected, out of an available pool of each. This is
still the case, though not openly.
These guys are universally young [about the same age as the bands being
wooed], and nowadays they always have some obvious underground rock
credibility flag they can wave. Lyle Preslar, former guitarist for Minor
Threat, is one of them. Terry Tolkin, former NY independent booking agent
and assistant manager at Touch and Go is one of them. Al Smith, former
soundman at CBGB is one of them. Mike Gitter, former editor of XXX fanzine
and contributor to Rip, Kerrang and other lowbrow rags is one of them. Many
of the annoying turds who used to staff college radio stations are in their
ranks as well.
There are several reasons A&R scouts are always young. The explanation
usually copped-to is that the scout will be "hip" to the current musical
"scene." A more important reason is that the bands will intuitively trust
someone they think is a peer, and who speaks fondly of the same formative
rock and roll experiences.
The A&R person is the first person to make contact with the band, and as
such is the first person to promise them the moon. Who better to promise
them the moon than an idealistic young Turk who expects to be calling the
shots in a few years, and who has had no previous experience with a big
record company. Hell, he's as naive as the band he's duping. When he tells
them no one will interfere in their creative process, he probably even
believes it.
When he sits down with the band for the first time, over a plate of angel
hair pasta, he can tell them with all sincerity that when they sign with
company X, they're really signing with him and he's on their side. Remember
that great, gig I saw you at in '85? Didn't we have a blast.
By now all rock bands are wise enough to be suspicious of music industry
scum. There is a pervasive caricature in popular culture of a portly, middle
aged ex-hipster talking a mile-a-minute, using outdated jargon and calling
everybody "baby." After meeting "their" A&R guy, the band will say to
themselves and everyone else, "He's not like a record company guy at all!
He's like one of us." And they will be right. That's one of the reasons he
was hired.
These A&R guys are not allowed to write contracts. What they do is present
the band with a letter of intent, or "deal memo," which loosely states some
terms, and affirms that the band will sign with the label once a contract
has been agreed on.
The spookiest thing about this harmless sounding little "memo," is that it
is, for all legal purposes, a binding document. That is, once the band sign
it, they are under obligation to conclude a deal with the label. If the
label presents them with a contract that the band don't want to sign, all
the label has to do is wait. There are a hundred other bands willing to
sign the exact same contract, so the label is in a position of strength.
These letters never have any term of expiration, so the band remain bound
by the deal memo until a contract is signed, no matter how long that takes.
The band cannot sign to another label or even put out its own material
unless they are released from their agreement, which never happens. Make
no mistake about it: once a band has signed a letter of intent, they will
either eventually sign a contract that suits the label or they will be
destroyed.
One of my favorite bands was held hostage for the better part of two years
by a slick young "He's not like a label guy at all,' A&R rep, on the basis
of such a deal memo. He had failed to come through on any of his promises
(something he did with similar effect to another well-known band), and so
the band wanted out. Another label expressed interest, but when the A&R
man was asked to release the band, he said he would need money or points,
or possibly both, before he would consider it.
The new label was afraid the price would be too dear, and they said no
thanks. On the cusp of making their signature album, an excellent band,
humiliated, broke up from the stress and the many months of inactivity.
There's This Band
There's this band. They're pretty ordinary, but they're also pretty good,
so they've attracted some attention. They're signed to a moderate-sized
"independent" label owned by a distribution company, and they have another
two albums owed to the label.
They're a little ambitious. They'd like to get signed by a major label so
they can have some security-you know, get some good equipment, tour in a
proper tour bus-nothing fancy, just a little reward for all the hard work.
To that end, they got a manager. He knows some of the label guys, and he
can shop their next project to all the right people. He takes his cut,
sure, but it's only 15%, and if he can get them signed then it's money well
spent. Anyway, it doesn't cost them any thing if it doesn't work. 15% of
nothing isn't much!
One day an A&R scout calls them, says he's "been following them for a while
now," and when their manager mentioned them to him, it just "clicked."
Would they like to meet with him about the possibility of working out a
deal with his label? Wow. Big Break time.
They meet the guy, and y'know what-he's not what they expected from a label
guy. He's young and dresses pretty much like the band does. He knows all
their favorite bands. He's like one of them. He tells them he wants to go
to bat for them, to try to get them everything they want. He says anything
is possible with the right attitude. They conclude the evening by taking
home a copy of a deal memo they wrote out and signed on the spot.
The A&R guy was full of great ideas, even talked about using a name
producer. Butch Vig is out of the question-he wants 100 g's and three
points, but they can get Don Fleming for $30,000 plus three points. Even
that's a little steep, so maybe they'll go with that guy who used to be in
David Letterman's band. He only wants three points. Or they can have just
anybody record it [like Warton Tiers, maybe-cost you 5 or 10 grand] and
have Andy Wallace remix it for 4 grand a track plus 2 points. It was a lot
to think about.
Well, they like this guy and they trust him. Besides, they already signed
the deal memo. He must have been serious about wanting them to sign. They
break the news to their current label, and the label manager says he wants
them to succeed, so they have his blessing. He will need to be compensated,
of course, for the remaining albums left on their contract, but he'll work
it out with the label himself. Sub Pop made millions from selling off
Nirvana, and Twin Tone hasn't done bad either: 50 grand for the Babes and
60 grand for the Poster Children-without having to sell a single additional
record. It'll be something modest. The new label doesn't mind, so long as
it's recoupable out of royalties.
Well, they get the final contract, and it's not quite what they expected.
They figure it's better to be safe than sorry and they turn it over to a
lawyer-one who says he's experienced in entertainment law-and he hammers
out a few bugs. They're still not sure about it, but the lawyer says he's
seen a lot of contracts, and theirs is pretty good. They'll be getting a
great royalty: 13% [less a 10% packaging deduction]. Wasn't it Buffalo Tom
that were only getting 12% less 10? Whatever.
The old label only wants 50 grand, and no points. Hell, Sub Pop got 3 points
when they let Nirvana go. They're signed for four years, with options on
each year, for a total of over a million dollars! That's a lot of money in
any man's English. The first year's advance alone is $250,000. Just think
about it, a quarter-million, just for being in a rock band!
Their manager thinks it's a great deal, especially the large advance.
Besides, he knows a publishing company that will take the band on if they
get signed, and even give them an advance of 20 grand, so they'll be making
that money too. The manager says publishing is pretty mysterious, and nobody
really knows where all the money comes from, but the lawyer can look that
contract over too. Hell, it's free money.
Their booking agent is excited about the band signing to a major. He says
they can maybe average $1,000 or $2,000 a night from now on. That's enough
to justify a five week tour, and with tour support, they can use a proper
crew, buy some good equipment and even get a tour bus! Buses are pretty
expensive, but if you figure in the price of a hotel room for everybody in
the band and crew, they're actually about the same cost. Some bands (like
Therapy? and Sloan and Stereolab) use buses on their tours even when they're
getting paid only a couple hundred bucks a night, and this tour should earn
at least a grand or two every night. It'll be worth it. The band will be
more comfortable and will play better.
The agent says a band on a major label can get a merchandising company to
pay them an advance on T-shirt sales! Ridiculous! There's a gold mine here!
The lawyer should look over the merchandising contract, just to be safe.
They get drunk at the signing party. Polaroids are taken and everybody
looks thrilled. The label picked them up in a limo.
They decided to go with the producer who used to be in Letterman's band.
He had these technicians come in and tune the drums for them and tweak
their amps and guitars. He had a guy bring in a slew of expensive old
vintage microphones. Boy, were they "warm." He even had a guy come in and
check the phase of all the equipment in the control room! Boy, was he
professional. He used a bunch of equipment on them and by the end of it,
they all agreed that it sounded very "punchy," yet "warm."
All that hard work paid off. With the help of a video, the album went like
hotcakes! They sold a quarter million copies!
Here is the math that will explain just how fucked they are:
These figures are representative of amounts that appear in record contracts
daily. There's no need to skew the figures to make the scenario look bad,
since real-life examples more than abound. Income is underlined, expenses
are not.
Advance: $250,000
Manager's cut: $37,500
Legal fees: $10,000
Recording Budget: $150,000
Producer's advance: $50,000
Studio fee: $52,500
Drum, Amp, Mic and Phase "Doctors": $3,000
Recording tape: $8,000
Equipment rental: $5,000
Cartage and Transportation: $5,000
Lodgings while in studio: $10,000
Catering: $3,000
Mastering: $10,000
Tape copies, reference CDs, shipping tapes, misc. expenses: $2,000
Video budget: $30,000
Cameras: $8,000
Crew: $5,000
Processing and transfers: $3,000
Offline: $2,000
Online editing: $3,000
Catering: $1,000
Stage and construction: $3,000
Copies, couriers, transportation: $2,000
Director's fee: $3,000
Album Artwork: $5,000
Promotional photo shoot and duplication: $2,000
Band fund: $15,000
New fancy professional drum kit: $5,000
New fancy professional guitars (2): $3,000
New fancy professional guitar amp rigs (2): $4,000
New fancy potato-shaped bass guitar: $1,000
New fancy rack of lights bass amp: $1,000
Rehearsal space rental: $500
Big blowout party for their friends: $500
Tour expense (5 weeks): $50,875
Bus: $25,000
Crew (3): $7,500
Food and per diems: $7,875
Fuel: $3,000
Consumable supplies: $3,500
Wardrobe: $1,000
Promotion: $3,000
Tour gross income: $50,000
Agent s cut: $7,500
Manager's cut: $7,500
Merchandising advance: $20,000
Manager's cut: $3,000
Lawyer's fee: $1,000
Publishing advance: $20,000
Manager's cut: $3,000
Lawyer's fee: $1,000
Record sales: 250,000 @ $12 = $3,000,000 gross retail revenue Royalty (13%
of 90% of retail): $351,000
Less advance: $250,000
Producer's points: (3% less $50,000 advance) $40,000
Promotional budget: $25,000
Recoupable buyout from previous label: $50,000
Net royalty: (-$14,000)
Record company income:
Record wholesale price $6.50 x 250,000 = $1,625,000 gross income
Artist Royalties: $351,000
Deficit from royalties: $14,000
Manufacturing, packaging and distribution @ $2.20 per record: $550,000
Gross profit: $710,000
The Balance Sheet: This is how much each player got paid at the end of the
game.
Record company: $710,000
Producer: $90,000
Manager: $51,000
Studio: $52,500
Previous label: $50,000
Agent: $7,500
Lawyer: $12,000
Band member net income each: $4,031.25
The band is now 1/4 of the way through its contract, has made the music
industry more than 3 million dollars richer, but is in the hole $14,000 on
royalties. The band members have each earned about 1/3 as much as they
would working at a 7-11, but they got to ride in a tour bus for a month.
The next album will be about the same, except that the record company will
insist they spend more time and money on it. Since the previous one never
"recouped," the band will have no leverage, and will oblige.
The next tour will be about the same, except the merchandising advance will
have already been paid, and the band, strangely enough, won't have earned
any royalties from their t-shirts yet. Maybe the T-shirt guys have figured
out how to count money like record company guys.
Some of your friends are probably already this fucked.
(c) 1999 [indiecentre]
(aka hobbit, posting anonymously here because I've already moderated in this discussion).
Undoing moderation to Comment #78
Undoing moderation to Comment #87
Undoing moderation to Comment #116
Undoing moderation to Comment #218
Oops, that didn't work.
Hamish"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
Lessee -- I record a free-form monologue about how I first encountered Metallica (a bootleg tape of a concert that had "Hit The Lights" on it), how even over the much abused and much played crappy tape, that had made its way all the way from the West Coast to backwoods Mississippi, I could still make out the music and how much it affected me.
I tell about how I enjoyed the tape (that I made a copy of but unfortunately don't have anymore), and since then have bought every Metallica albumn up to S&M -- some of them TWICE, once on tape, once on CD. I tell about how Metallica's music helped me through some tough times in high school (tough to be a nerd in redneck land). I'll complain about how Jason got screwed in the "...And Justice For All" mix. I'll relate a quote from Lars who said, once, that "..more than any other band, we're like Rush".
I'll talk about the first time I heard about James's accident. I'll talk about how Metallica came back to Canada to finish the concert that James got hurt in, after Guns & Roses' Axl pitched a hissy-fit and walked off after 30 minutes.
I'll mention that Metallica's strength has always been their connection with their fans: how Jason tirelessly signs autographs, how the band once let people record their concerts, how hard-working the band has always been.
I'll say all this, and mention that Metallica, in their unique position of NOT being a slave to the record industry, who in fact seem to have always been in the position of leaders, have turned into followers (slaves, if you will), of a corporate mentality that denegrates their past efforts. I'll talk about how Metallica could be remembered, years after the band is no more, as the group that led the way, changing how musicians interact with their fans forever. I'll sadly mention that now, Metallica will most likely be remembered not for how much they cared and respected their fans, but how they attacked them.
I'll record this monologue and rip it to an MP3. I'll save multiple copies of it with the band's song titles, and put them up on Napster. With any luck, one of the band members will hear it, and know how disappointed I am with them, and how sad I will be because I will not listen to them anymore. And, since it's not their music, they can't ask me to take it down -- they can only ask that I change the titles. But that would be fine. I'd do that, and distribute the MP3 far and wide - hopefully, any potential fan would hear it first and then decide that Metallica isn't the band for them.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Actually I downloaded a song out of pure irritation. I'm probably not alone.
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
- The suits were filed at nearly the same time.
- They are being represented by the same lawyer.
- They are both suing Napster, with the same demands.
Though I am not saying that they are innocent...--
Second, please remember that Metallica and Dr. Dre are only misguided artists. They have been brainwashed by the suits to think that all these evil hackers (media definition) are stealing their hard-earned money. These particular artists were picked to cover the most bases, because they seem to have (had) a lot of fans. I don't like either one much (and not because of this), but I know that a lot of people do like at least one of them.
--
No one is keeping you from listening to any music you want. The RIAA doesn't give a damn what you listen to. If you want to listen to something, go buy the cd/watch the video/go to a friend's house/listen to the radio/etc.
Surely Metallica should be grateful that they are so popular on Napster?
Surely Metallica should be grateful that so many people are copying their music without paying for it. They're rich, afterall. Surely they have no right to ask PAYMENT for their services. How absurd.
What is their attempt to block all these Napster users going to achieve?
1) It will cut down on the number of people illegally copying their music on napster. 2) It suffices as a much better solution than lobbying for legislation.
That they care more about their profits than their fans?
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't a real fan go out and buy metallica merchandise to support the band rather than copying their music off the internet?
They want to share music! What's wrong with that?
What's wrong with it is that you enter an agreement when you buy that cd that you will only make 1 copy of it for archival purposes and not distribute it around. Making it available on napster is equivalent to distributing it. There is no verification mechanism to prevent unauthorized people from getting your (publicly available) copy of a copyrighted work.
The cost of raw materials != the cost to produce an album. There's lawyers, artists to design the cover and liner notes, the cost of the studio the band records the album in, cost of instruments, payment for producers, mixers, sound editors, etc. And that's just on a simple album. There's more design work to be done if a band wants a special 3d case or extra liner notes or a double cd album.
Two words: Forbidden Apple.
Paging Dr. Freud, Dr. Freud, we have an emergency slip in sector 7G.
I am just going to rename a bunch of junk files in with this format .mp3 ... Do you think they are really checking the file content?
Everybody could do it. It would be kinda tough to track down and verify every single file on napster with "metallica" in the filename.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
I'm sure the band would much rather recieve $15 directly from the fan than $.80 from the record company. This is about what musicians make on each CD due to royalties, cd production, and record company fees. So why again is it they are trying to ban 300,000 odd napster users?
Elijah Chancey www.elijahsadventure.com nomadic IT consultant, bicycling across america "all that you touch / and all
Note: This post free of Metallica puns.
Although its probably been asked before, exactly HOW do you prove its pirated music? Lets assume they sniff my activity and see that I am downloading a file thats "pirated". So they come to my house and try to bust me. As soon as I see the cops coming up, I grab my roommate's copy of the record.
Them: "We're here to bust you. You downloaded illegal music." (looks at HD)
Me: Nope, just ripped it myself, bought the CD with cash so there's no record.
OK, so maybe they have irrefutable proof I downloaded it from someone. I can't claim I ripped it. Maybe *he* ripped it, and sent me a copy - after all, we're both legitimate owners of the CD and there's no law against that (is there?). Don't you, at some point, have to find EVERY SINGLE PERSON who uses Napster, look at their CD collection, and then figure out who's actually stealing, and who (like me, often) is downloading because I'm too lazy to waste CPU ripping CD's?
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
... if they can afford to alienate 335,435 fans.
Seriously, I doubt it. Not being a Metallica fan (I don't think I'd recognize a single one of the releases), I could care less if their music is banned from Napster. I just wonder how the heck they think they're going to benefit from this.
The only person who stands to really gain from this is the lawyer (also representing Dr. Dre, another musical has-been).
--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Napster was written for the sole purpose of trading mp3's. Now we all know that 99.999% of all of you napster users are talentless toads that cant write music let alone figure out what end of a guitar you play. So in obvious tones napster users trade music that they have no rights trading (I.E. they steal it). I can see napster becoming a great system for artists, but then you have to keep the ankle biters (Those of you who download music because you're too damn lazy to buy it) out.... this is impossible.
So, what legitimate use is napster? please someone show me ONE legitimate napster server/user.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I'd really like to see someone try and sue because "They blocked my Ip address from their servers!" The court would tell you that you are a whiney baby and kick you out the nearest window! I block large IP blocks daily! and I will forever... Napster can do whatever they want to their equipment and there is NOTHING you can do to prevent it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Ok, there is the Tiny fraction... Ok, I see the few legitimate users. Thank you.
Hmm, but why napster? why not from mp3.com or on a nice high bandwidth site that anyone can use? Why a transport mechanisim that is designed to be sneaky, and covert? Is it because people who listen to those bands are ashamed of listining to them? Is there a group out ther that systematically executes Dave matthews band fans? Napster was created to be sneaky and for trading mp3's otherwise it'd allow me to fire up without forcing me to put an mp3 file in the "I want to share this" directory. Hmmm, if it's for legit uses then why force me to break the law to use it?
I'm no musician, and I dont have any of the crappy live recordings made from a casette player that I had to sneak into the concert. (Dont tell me that they condone recording at their concert, I'll bet you $1000.00 that they wont let me set up my 16 track digital recorder and place mikes near the speakers/crowd for optimal recording) so I have to rip a song from my cd's and illegally trade it.
again, where is the legit use of Napster.
I'm serious... if it was legit it wouldnt be set up like warez mp3z and porn sites... upload something to get something.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Irronic that the system which makes it easy to
exchange music, also makes it easy to find those
who stal it.
I have an idea, how about everyone who uses napster renaming ONE MP3 file to include the phrase "Not by Metallica" or "Sans Metallica" or some other such phrase. Let their investigators try to week through all of the additional hits that they'd encounter by searching through results that include every Napster user.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I'm getting tired of the recurring mentality I see in this thread, as well as the generic 'Napster' mentality I see as well.
Of course everyone who has ever used Napster(and it's derivatives, for simplicity, I'm just going to say Napster here.) is deleting the files that they don't have a "license" for. Nobody on Napster ever tries to get something for nothing. Everyone immediately buys the CD that they just downloaded.
Believe that, and I've got ocean front property in Iowa to sell you.
I wrote a nice piece on ironminds.com 's discussion forums about this several days ago, when the "Free Limp Bizkit Napster Concert!! Boo Metallica! Boo!" Story passed by there.(That wasn't the title, but by golly, that was the Cliff's Notes version of the story) It was only time before this story hit Our Beloved Slashdot. Of course the discussions weren't biased at all. The comments were filled with points and counter-points, diatribes thought out in rational ideas, with research done as SOP. This is an impartial forum. We never bash Anti-Linux/Anti-Mp3 items for sport. All OS's are equal in the grand scheme. MP3's are a blessing! Share and Enjoy! Stick it to [The Man|RIAA|Bill Gates|AnyoneWhoIsn'tLinuxOrMp3Centric]!!!
I hope Metallica Wins. But before you slap 'Flamebait' on me, risk reading on. Yes, Metallica is a "Known" band. They aren't starving for fans, or funds. But what about bands who aren't so lucky? Niche bands? I would have never heard of half of the bands I know about if I hadn't been random keyword searching on Napster. Bands like Moxy Fruvous (An enjoyable band of which I'm going to a concert soon, I'm now a fan.) And many, many others. These bands would probably die to have 350k+ people know their name. But, unlike Metallica, How many would shrug off the potential loss of sales if everyone on Napster decided to just DL their songs? What if it was a No-Named band who tried to do the same tactics as Metallica? Would that even warrant a slashdot posting? (Well, it mentioned MP3's and Napster, that's all you need to get on Slashdot. Flame Microsoft, Support Linux, and Make Faces at John Katz, and you've got a winning story on /., but I digress..)
But since it's Metallica and not a nameless band, let's raise an uproar. I'm not going to even get into the Limp Bizkit/Metallica rivalries here. <Humor>That's a pointless and silly 'holy war'. Zealotry has no place on Slashdot...</Humor>
Perhaps a middle ground can be reached, where a compromise can be found. IANAMusician, but if I was, I would most likely embrace Napster as a Good Thing(tm). And post my own music on it. Post it to a web site, give away a few songs. Radio stations (at least the DC area ones) play a single song from a band until it's beaten into the ground, and then play it more. Since anyone can record from the radio. (The "Low Tech Napster", if you will..) I'd post my Airplay songs, with pointers to where to purchase my Full CD's.
I hope Metallica Wins. As much as I'd hate to see something as Innovative as Napster suffer. (a Distributed file system/library/archive? Why limit Napster to just mp3's, when you can share everything. You just might have that file that John Q. Hacker needs to finish his Next Big Thing.) I think that a precedent needs set. But I'm also cautious that a wrong precedent be set as well. I'd rather see the "Free/Approved Is Okay. Copywritten/Protected works are Not" happen, than "No Napster"
I'm also fscking tired of the "We want Everything For Nothing" that seems to permeate these forums. People who, for all intents and purposes, are no better than leeches, wanting anything they desire to be delivered to them, and will bite the hand that dares suggest they do otherwise. Warez, porn, mp3's... Don't restrict my cable modem! I want to DL my mp3z and warez even faster!
I support Metallica. Music is how they make their money. As you bitch that 'Metallicrap' is attacking your Precious MP3's, Please realize, it may be -your- money making product on Napster next.
Even under today's copyright law, artists have no legal power to decide how people use and obtain their work, other than preventing unauthorized copies ...
Isn't this what Metallica is doing?
I can play recordings of their songs for my friends, I can perform their work in public or private, I can buy and sell used recordings.
Yes, but the purchase of a used recording, still involves a tangible item, When you buy a used CD, the seller doesn't retain the CD to sell to the next person. Also, "playing songs for your friends" in this context, is like comparing apples and oranges. Yes, your friends are hearing the songs. But they're not going home with a duplicate copy of the CD.
Copying by its very nature is not and cannot be theft. Theft takes something away from the victim. If I make a copy, you still have the original.
Not true. If I copy my neighbor's Windows 98 CD, He still has it. But what I have done is committed software piracy. No, I didn't steal the disk from him. If what you said was true, every "warez" on the planet is legitimate. After all, the owner of the original disk still retains it. Nothing illegal about copying software by your argument. I would LOVE to see this argument even attempted in court. "But your Honor, I never STOLE all that software. They still have the disks."
Oh, I see, you're using "pirate" in the incorrect and prejudicial sense of "one who makes an unauthorized copy". How in the world the same term should apply to copying as to murder, rape, and theft on the high seas is beyond me
Straw man argument. Please do not attempt to attack these actions by drawing a correlation between pillaging and mp3s. This forum has enough trivial discussions without sinking further into Usenet Flamewar Tactics. Next someone will invoke Goodwin's Law.
So, anyway, you say that money has been lost from the artists to the folks at Napster? Did Napster come and rob their piggy banks? No? So if the musicians still have all the money they had before, how was money lost?
Another straw man. If, as I mentioned before, I copy Windows 98, I have not taken money from Microsoft's coffers. But, I have aquired an item, that would have required monetary compensation otherwise. Equasions of commerce must balance out, or one side takes a loss. In this case, Microsoft loses $Retail_Price in sales, because I did not pay for the software.
The only think that might have been lost were potential profits. Well, guess what - potentials change. You don't have a moral right to stuff that you could have had if circumstances had been different.
I'm astounded at the leaps of logic in this post. I sincerely hope my sarcasm detector is broken, and you aren't wholly serious. In one paragraph you proclaim that copying is not illegal, and in this one, you switch sides, and state the exact opposite.
But considering that CD sales are up, it's hard to even argue that potential profits were lost.
A case of not seeing the forest for the trees. We, the denziens of the Internet, forget that our little world, is not The Whole World. And who said CD sales are up? cdnow.com? Uncle Vinny's House of Country Music? What statistical percentage of people are active on The Internet? And out of that, how many are on Napster, or even KNOW about MP3's? 350k people proclaimed by Metallica. that's, (unless I have done the math wrong) 0.005% of the population of the world. Why yes. Insignificant numbers of people. While we're playing with numbers, I'd like to have 0.005% of the Govt Budget. after all, it wouldn't affect potential matters any either... But I digress. Even that is distortion of numbers. It's easy to fudge things to fit your viewpoint. How many people in the world do you think are stumped even turning on a computer, let alone getting "on the web", or working out what an MP3 is.
I feel that Metallica is perhaps attempting to nip something in the bud, that could have potentially damaging problems for musicians anywhere. Not just them, or the RIAA, or what have you.
Picture this, let's say I'm a Nameless Garage Band. I post samples to my web site, and for $5, you can download the mp3's of the CD we have. Or, for $8, We'll send you a disk. Garage Band, hell, our disks are CD-R's with a crappy inkjet label. But there's no Big Company. We don't care, We're part of the "World Wide Web" Music society. We're going to do it The Digital Music Revolution Way!!
But what if someone posts our songs on Napster. Sure, he paid the $5, and we made a little money. But now -everyone- could get our songs for free. Why pay that $5, if napster has the identical files for the taking. Suddenly, The Mp3 thing changes. I can't make back my upkeep costs, let alone dream of profit. Now I've got to find a record label to carry us, and pray for a glimmer of profit. Our disks are now $12/18 or so, and potential fans brush past our unknown name, in favor of the Latest Fad Band.
Somehow, even if Metallica doesn't fully grok Napster, I hope they doing it for this above reason. Because They can do it, where Joe Nameless Band couldn't. But **Metallica!!** a band that is "A Name" Could speak in a more respected(or 'audible') voice than Joe Nameless Band. To use their position/fame/name to promote a cause.
I hope Metallica wins. If not for themselves, for all the current and future bands that Can't Fight This.
No, they aren't going to search the houses of 335,000 people. They don't need to.
Metallica, their lawyer, or anyone else who wants to just has to find some random stranger on the street, ask them if they own any metallica CDs, if they say no, have them sign an affadavit that says so, sit them in front of a computer running Napster, type in Metallica for them, and have them download every song they find.
If you were one of the people who had Metallica songs in your directory and it was downloaded, congratulations! You've just distributed copyrighted material to someone who has no legitamate right to have it. The recipient may have done wrong as well, but the law comes down much harder on the person doing the distribution than the one on the receiving end.
There's a difference between digital and analog audio extraction.
Most of the extraction programs I've seen out there are indeed analog programs, capturing the signal that travels to the computers sound card. Digital extraction programs don't do that. They read the CD bit for bit (as if it were an ISO, Joliet, HFS, or any other file system) and write that same exact data to the computers hard drive. They don't need a hookup to the sound card in order to get their data.
If your theory about data loss of digital copies was true, then no data would be safe. But things like checksums and digital signatures exist to be sure that failed copies are dealt with appropriately. If you copied a file to your floppy drive, hard drive, or tape drive, then if even one bit changed, the checksums would be different and you'd know you didn't make an exact copy.
I'd be happy to see more artists and record companies follow the traditional bounds of the law and go after those who are actually committing copyright infringement. Why? Because then they won't be using their $$$ to sue common carriers, whom I feel should be protected under the law. As far as I can tell, Napster has acted within the law thus far by removing users who have acted illegally. So if this latest action takes the heat off of Napster and puts it onto those who are really illegally copying mp3s, so much the better.
Sure it's a pain for Napster to check their logs 335000 times and boot that many users (only if they really were trading Metallica, of course), but on the other hand it's a pain for record companies to come up with the lists in the first time. I'd much rather the record companies have to do the normal amount of work to track down copyright violations (just like they would have to do for copied movies, cassette tapes, etc.) as opposed to them just suing the heck out of mp3.com, napster, Diamond, and so forth.
Note that I'm ignoring the issue of whether the current copyright law is right or not (I think it is, mostly) - that's not the issue. The issue is that I'd much rather the RIAA & co. act within our current legal framework, because when they are tempted to extend the law instead (the DMCA, for example) we tend to lose rights in order to make their jobs easier. And our overall rights to fair use and reverse engineering are more important than the rights of 335000 people to (allegedly) trade unauthorized Metallica.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
How did a group of guys that put out the Garage Days ep (specifically the controversial Green Hell) end up acting so suit-like. This is just another example of "blame the tool" mentality gone awry.
Although I agree that distributing bootleg copyrighted material is a violation of the agreement that the original purchaser made by making the purchase, I don't see how Napster can be blamed. It analogous to suing a city because I got rear ended. After all if they hadn't provided the street then it never would have happened.
Additionally we have to consider the actual financial impact on this particular group of millionaires. They have a fairly large calalog of music and anyone likely to buy a Metallica album is probably going to make the purchase even after they find their favorite singles with Napster or one of its imitators. Mp3 format still requires a PC or some special hardware and burning CD's is still not mainstream enough to believe that people are going to be using bootlegged media in more traditional settings like their cars and living rooms. Combine that with the inconvenience of downloading a 5 minute song with the 56k modems that most of us still connect to the internet with and the $12 or $13 doesn't seem so bad.
Frankly I think that the ability of Napster users to check out a few singles on line probably has a positive financial effect on artists, profit hungry or otherwise.
Its nice to see that metallica really appreciates their fans. Point: Yeah, what wonderful fans. Ripping Metallica CDs and making them available to anyone for free download. Gee, I'm sure they'll really miss fans like that. Counterpoint: F**k you, you and Metallica are working for the man! Back when Metallica was cool, before they sold out, they used to send thank you letters to people who got caught shoplifting their CDs! I'll never pay for their music again now that they're making me jump through more hoops to steal it. Point: Now that's an ... interesting policy. No, really. Counterpoint: Yeah, dude! Fight the man! Cheers,ZicoKnows@hotmail.com Cheers,ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
You assume they have the foresight required to see the music revolution. They do not, otherwise they would probably be pursuing different means of dealing with the mp3 phenomenon.
I'm not so sure about that. Back in the 80s when they still played heavy metal and attracted fans by the virtue of their music, this would have indeed worked.
But now that they've given up on metal and shifted to the cheeze market, I think they need the old media to keep them in the public eye in order to get sales. Very few people are serendipitously "discovering" Metallica these days and saying "Whoa, this is so cool!" and most of their old fans from the 80s have turned away in disgust. Metallica's sales are now almost entirely push-driven, and I think that makes the new media useless to them.
So I'm not so sure their strategy of suppressing MP3s is a bad thing. Metallica's name can confuse people because of their glorious past, so wipe away the confusion by asking yourself this: What would Brittney Spears do?
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
So, Napster bans them. How do they enforce the ban?
It can't be on IP address, because people will be logging on from dial-up acocunts, and so not have a static IP address. (Not to mention people coming from behind firewalls that have been configured to allow them to use Napster, etc)
It can't be on username, because what's to stop someone just re-registering with a different one?
I really can't see this being enforceable; all it's going to do is delay the inevitable call for Napster to be banned altogether, which will almost certainly happen when Metallica realise that the user ban doesn't make a blind bit of difference.
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
It's a good thing napster have stringent new user requirements so the banned users can't just join up again under a different username.
hey.... wait a minute....
This is a chnace to really talk to Metallica and not though some pr, media induced, marketing and legal BS.
You haven't been to any celebrity chats yet, have you?
You won't get to talk to Metallica. Metallica probably won't even be typing on a keyboard. Your questions will be filtered (in advance this time!) through moderators, and Metallica will give their answers, which someone else will type.
It's like a press release.
Additionally Napster should put in place filters that block files based on artist/title strings at the request of the copyright holders.
That would not be good. What if the band The The told Napster to ban every song with the word The in its filename?
One thing you should probably be aware of is that owning a CD almost certainly allows you to make personal-use MP3's of it, but:
1. It probably doesn't allow you to download other MP3's without "buying" them.
2. It certainly doesn't allow you to offer those MP3's to others, in the general case.
Distribution is magic in copyright law. It is *NOT*, in the eyes of the law, the same thing to do something yourself as it is to have someone do it for you in cases of infringement.
If you want the law changed, great, I certainly won't be the one to try to stop you.
But, under the current law, the people trading MP3's are wrong, and the bands are right. Make your own MP3's from your own CD's.
It's always amazing how quickly slashdot can polarize on an issue. Gosh, sure is easy to hate those people who have something I want and aren't giving it to me cheap enough.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Metallica's incentive to create is obviously $$, which is not evil. (But you'd think 9 out of 10 slashdotters are communists when you read the posts!)
Is anyone else tired of all the "I'm poor, so I will only get a no-cost copy" whiners?
Grow up! Civilized people respect artists' wishes, and legal enforcement would be unnecessary when you do that.
How do you know they broke the law? Did you go check to make sure they didn't own a copy of the album that they were dl'ing clips of? IMO, if you own the album, you should be allowed to dl/rip the tracks. Of course, Napster has no way of determining ownership status of a track.
My.MP3.com tries to do this, but it can easily be spoofed (Hey buddy, let me borrow a copy of 'foo' for a minute or two...). Of course, they lost in court when they tried to enforce a verification procedure.
Of course, I agree with the sentiment that people who break the law should pay, but I seriously doubt that there is a precedent where someone was sent to jail for copyright infringement. I mean, come on!!! Let's reserve jails for those who are a menace to society at large (killers, rapists, etc.) Besides, do you really want ~$35k of tax money to go to supporting each person who is jailed for such (relatively) minor offense? I don't.
joke_mode(on);
flame(on);
Does anyone have a pirated MP3 of Lars Ulrich's press conference they'd like to share?
Explanation of above joke: All a millionaire like Lars Ulrich accomplishes by bitching and whining about people sharing his music, is that more people are likely to rip him off more than ever before. He'd be smart to shut his mouth instead of trying to protect the record industry.
joke_mode(off);
I'll stop using Napster when the music industry stops charging me $18 for a 35 minutes of music just so they can make another $14,000,000.00 fish-eye-lens / helicopter / humvee / shiny space suit Puffy Combs video.
flame(off);
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
It may be true that they are alienating their fans; it may be true that they are not seeing the "brave new world", powered by the Internet where information "wants to be free". For all those who call upon this so-called revolution, let me ask you: Do you really think that this music-swapping, without anyone paying for it, could go on like this ? Do you really believe that there wasn't going to be an artist who would pick up the sword and - rightly so - proclaim: You are thieves. ?
The impact of MP3s on CD sales (whether the sales will decrease or increase) is, in this case, also irrelevant. The distribution channels of music may be different in the future and the copyrights may be more lenient; changes may be in air. Nevertheless, we would be creating a double economy and fully accepting piracy if we allowed Napster to go on like this under the current jurisdiction.
This is very simple to do. You too can try it by doing this:
Materials:
A PC connected to the Internet via Ethernet (i.e. via DSL, Cable Modem or T1)
The Napster client - loaded and configured on the PC
Some sort of sniffer software, loaded and configured on the same PC
Method:
Start up the Sniffer, then launch the Napster client, tracing the packets compng to your machine. Stop the trace, sort through the packets and note the port number that your machine is using to get to the Napster net. This gives you the port # that Napster uses. Next, start another trace, but filter out all but the Napster port coming to your machine. Use the Napster Client to search for "Metallica". Now your sniffer will capture packets from every one on the net who's sharing songs by Metallica - including thier IP address. Now you can trace them back to their ISP - so much for anonymity.
This is script-kiddie stuff. If this NetPD is any good at all, they'll find you at your access point - so as you can see, getting to you, regardless of your Napster user name, is terribly simple.
Be careful about whose songs you're trading, people.
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
I'm all for Metallica crushing Napster. The fact is that people who are trading MP3s illegally should expect to get their heads bashed.
Regardless of whether or not you think music is overpriced, your only right as a consumer is "don't buy the damn thing". Not "steal it if it feels right".
The article said they hired Net PD, to monitor the Napster system last weekend, so, I'm assuming they just looked for any any titles that had the word Metallica in them.
Short of listening to each song, there's no way to tell whether it's a song that was recorded by Metallica, or my personal recorded feelings on the band, which would be completely legal.
So, I would say, were I the folks at napster, that these 300,000+ users that they want banned are unwarrented requests, and due to the first ammendment, they have no right to ban anyone based on content, unless it is proven to violate a copyright, on an individual basis.
metallica's music is crap that any 12 year old playing guitar for a year and a half can (and does) reproduce. well, except for the guitar solos. you have to practice for quite a while to be able to bore audiences with that style of wanking.
>They could block IP's but that would seriously piss off a lot of people, **probably to the point of a class-action suit against them.**
Sue? Where are Napster's users going to come up with the money to sue them?
If they HAD MONEY they wouldn't be STEALING music in the first place!
-Luke
All the many arguments aside (and there are arguments on both sides), Metallica has missed a very, very vital point:
They're annoying their fans.
Most of the people trading on Napster are not sitting there going "oh boy, am I screwing Lars and company!" They're fans. Now they've been called criminals and spied on. This, PR-wise alone, is an incredibly stupid and non-productive move.
They're FANS. At worst misguided, at best people that really like Metallica.
Metallica could have worked with them - they could have done album rereleases, promotional MP3s, and more. They could have a download site for most wanted tracks and sell ad space (imagine the hits!). They could have asked their fans (nicely) to stop trading MP3s and provided them themselves, or provided rerelase albums of desired tracks.
This feels to me like "shut up and do it our way or else, cash-cows."
Off to never, never land . . .
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
There's got to be a way to find a revenue model for artists that isn't completely nonsensical in the face of modern technology. Everything that the industry (meaning distributers, publishers, and producers, not the people who make the music in the first place) has attempted in the music arena is stupid. They need to make it as easy as Napster and Gnutella made file trading. I'm happy to pay a few bucks a song for a download if the process is:
I'd love it if there was a button on my radio that would download the song that's playing and charge me $5 for it. There is more money in this model because people would impulse buy more, there would be no distribution cost (look at what that did for software development), and you could end up charging more for the sum of all the tracks on the CD. I'd pay a premium for speed and convenience.
magic
> They are just going to tell Napster to get rid of these people.
If they know the actual names of people who are pirating their music, and fail to take those people to court, couldn't a case be made that they are not exercising "due diligence" in protecting their copyrights?
I have been wondering about this since last month, when we had the report that the RIAA had given Napster the names of 50 transgressors.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> That's a lot of work, and if Metallica/RIAA certifies the list without actually doing that work, they may open themselves to lawsuits from users whose accounts were closed under false certification.
.sig, a notable "Make Money Fast!!!" scheme has just occured to me.
Inspired by my own
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Remember.. it doesn't say 'sue' 335000 napster users, it says 'ban' them, and if you all remember napster's usage policy.. they say they will ban people if they are made aware of copyright infringement. Metallica is doing just that. Napster hides behind a usage agreement that says that napster is only to be used for legal purposes, and if it is being used for illegal purposes, that they should be informed and the users will be banned. Metallica is simply doing EXACTLY THAT.
They are probably trying to demonstrate that napster had no intention of obeying it's own usage agreement, and that they can't deal with the complaints.
Common sense goes a long way. That, plus the DMCA makes napster OBLIGATED to do their part. Remember, they are in the middle of a court case. Part of their defense will be that they offer to remove people who are using napster for illegal purposes. In other words.. they don't need to be sued.. they just need to be made aware of the problem, and they'll fix it.
Metallica is making them aware of the problem. Now.. will they fix it right away? Who knows.. it's not relevant at this point. Metallica doesn't care.. they are just making a point to help the RIAA in their case, I would bet.
Dear Napster user!
You may have already won! All you need to do is to be in the first 1,000 of 335,000 to turn off your Napster, and you will be qualified for the semifinals in a raffle to win a signed Metallica CD, together with a trip to the capital of the United States where you will appear in front of a government commitee on the issues of copyrighted music piracy.
But hurry! You must respond promptly in order to qualify, or your entry will be viewed as inadmissible evidence in the criminal case of music copyrightrights infringement.
Sincerely,
RIAA Legal Team
representing the interests of Metallica.
I was thinking of how to intentionally fail my drug test... It would make a good memoir story someday.
And how do they know that the files traded were Metallica songs? I'll hazard a guess: they looked at the filename. Since I can call any file anything I damn well please, this doesn't seem to me good enough.
Seems like a good time to prepend "Fuck Metallica" to all my mp3 filenames and see if I get accused of trading their songs...
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
PDT is GMT -7. (PST is GMT -8)
The question I've not seen anyone ask is how do they know how many people have traded their music? Just advertising that you have a file is not evidence. Unless they are somehow reading our IP packets, how can they have any evidence at all that this is being done, and who is doing it?
Sig is taking a break!
--Ben
He actually said that's my right. Not that's my legal entitlement. Rights are more fundamental than legal entitlements. Many things to which we have fundamental rights are illegal in this country, and exercising those rights in conflict with legal restrictions is a morally positive action. Laws cannot take away rights, they can only threaten force against the exercise of rights.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
If i own a CD and get a mpeg copy of a song on that CD from napster or whatever it would be fair use. It's just as if I would get a tape from a friend with a recording of the CD
I don't mean to start a flame war, but...
:(
:)
:)
I'm not into thrash metal and therefore wouldn't ever have bought or downloaded any Metallica. The saddest part of this is that my boycott of this particular band won't have significant effect.
Actually, a friend of mine told me just Saturday about their latest album which he said was backed up by some symphony orchestra. I'm not necessarily a classical music fan either, but, based on the moderating influence of a lot of pieces in the symphony I was thinking of giving it a listen... oh well.
For those of us to whom it applies, vote with your feet. Boycott those who don't recognize that the earth is round , mp3s are here to stay, and a new distribution model is fait accompli. They can only hurt their regular channel sales with their current mindset and lawsuits. I only wish I was going to be near a machine tonight at 5 pm for the chat to tell them what I think... Of course, there will probably be plenty of people there to express my opinion for me.
I particularly liked another post that suggested sending the $15 check directly to the band based on mp3 downloads of the album. Enough of those would get their attention.
Even if it's a band I like, my future purchase of their material will end if they pull a stunt like this.
Good thing I don't like rap either.
Russ
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
Have you ever been in a internet chat room, with a guest, and tried to ask a well thought out lucid question. Well let me tell you, its rather impossible. With the slashdot interviews, each person is allowed to spend thier time writting out their questions, and then the best questions get moderated up (theoretically). The end result, is a set of fairly good questions, directed towards the guest rather than a stream of nonsense. In no way am I implying that the slashdot audience is better, but the method for interviewing is in my opinion better.
Let's say that each of the Napster "copyright violators" had only 1 Metallica song they were distributing - the minimum for being a violator. My best guess is that the average Metallica song is probably around 4 minutes long. In order to determine that the files named "Metallica-AndJusticeForAll.mp3" really were Metallica bootlegs (and not just Backstreet Boys jams mislabeled) they would have had listened to 22333.33 hours of music ((335,000 songs * 4 minutes) / 60 minutes). At constant rate with no breaks and no sleep for 1 person that would be 930.55 days (22333.33 hours / 24 hours) worth of some serious headbanging. That was probably divided up into a team of people, let's say 4. So that would be 5583.33 hours each (22333.33 hours / 4 people) coming to 232.64 days concurrently (930.55 days / 4 people).
I'm sure all this wasn't free. NetPD probably isn't *that* dumb and since their customers are lawyers they probably billed out at over $100/hour. For the sake of the argument, let's say it was $100/hour. That means it cost the lawyers (4 headbangers banging away for 5583.33 hours each at $100/hour) a grand total of $2,233,333.33!
P.S. Please check my math. Too much Metallica has rotted my brain - just like mom said it would!
-the spoony fork
Speak truth to power.
Metallica have to do this if they want to be successful in sueing Napster. Napster claims that they are urging their users to obey to copyright laws. If they now don't ban users who obviously have broken these rules, then they are vulnerable.
And, btw, we shouldn't proclaim our freedom at someone elses cost and on the other hand complain loudly if someone breaks the GPL.
Cheers
Wolfgang
I've always been a huge Metallica fan. I've even _tried_ to defend them on /..
/.?
But this one bugs me. Either A) Metallica has lost their collective mind or B) They really understand and know what they are doing.
It's really starting to sound like A.
Guys, what about the fans? Don't you care anymore? The chat today should be interesting. Anybody got plans to post the transcript to
--
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
Last night I heard this music on the radio. With all the wah-wah and 'yeaaaaahhhh's I could tell it part of a new metallica album.
I could not even listen to it let alone haaving the desire to pirate the music. I wonder if the break in revenues is more related to the quality of the music than to mp3 trading.
What the hell has happened to the four horseman?
That happened right about the time they released "Load".
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I'm not sure how you can call it clever when all anyone has to do is (a) get a new account or (b) move to another (better?) method (gnutella?). What they've done is alienate a segment of their fanbase - or at least get a good chuckle out of them. They've also managed to spend a lot of money on bottom-feeders (ie, lawyers) to stop exactly zero transmissions of their ...[ahem], art.
Times are a-changin', fellow /. reader. This cat isn't getting back in the bag. Moxy Fruvous? Macy Grey? G Love & Special Sauce? Wamdue Project? All artists that I certaintly wouldn't have bought a CD from ...until I heard the whole thing via Napster. Now I'll buy a few of them, only to toss in my closet - just to be fair, really. I'm going out and buying a Limp Bizkit CD or two. He was dead-on-balls accurate when he said that only people with large bank accounts tend to get their panties in a bind from Napster.
So no, I'm not even remotely impressed with Metallica's streetwise accumen. This is the hacker community, and we flow around lawyers like Jolt around geek tonsils. Oh, and someone might want to tell Lars that he shouldn't bring a knife to a gunfight.
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MP3.com was offering a service whereby you put your own disk into the tray, it "beams" the music up (actually just notes that you own a valid copy) and then you can play it from anywhere (they have a copy of the same disk at their location). As you know, they lost.
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If I recall correctly, Napster said that they would ban users if the violated artists would attest under pains of perjury that certain people were trading in the copyrighted material.
.02
My question is, is having a song called "Metallica - One.mp3" on my machine proof enough? I mean, a name is an arbitrary thing. I can legally name every file on my computer microsoft.txt without violating any laws!
So when they (Metallica, et al) submit these names, did they just list whoever had something with the word "Metallica" in their index or do they have to prove (again, under pains of perjury) that this was an actual Metallica song?
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The correct term is "copyright infringement", and yes, it's actually a crime. You're taking an original creation someone else made and redistribute it without permission. The sad thing is that most people assume an attitude like yours, and think that copyright infringement is "no big deal". Quite obvious that you haven't produced much valuable Intellectual Property of your own - otherwise you might respect other's copyright a bit more.
But considering that CD sales are up, it's hard to even argue that potential profits were lost
So if I'm now making a thousand dollars per month, instead of ten thousand dollars per month, I shouldn't be whining?
Whatever, forget it - I'm starting to accept the reality that a lot of posters here make nonsensical comments for the benefit of OPEN SOURCE, INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE, and the like. I think I'm going to go now to rat on a few IRC mp3 leeches to the RIAA just to piss you zealots off.
Go get your free Palm V (25 referrals needed only!)
1) anarchist trite.
2) no. If you have intellectual property, you should have the right to do whatever you want with it. Just because some /. zealot doesn't agree with it doesn't mean he can trample all over your IP.
3) but certainly some shouting moron in all caps is definitely one.
4) typical swearing dumbass.
5) stop shouting, it's rude. And you're insulting Mr. Slippery to consider your post even remotely similar to his. At least his showed that it wasn't written by a moron.
Moderate at will,
Go get your free Palm V (25 referrals needed only!)
This is the right thing to do, did you expect them to give everyone right to copy without restriction?
Why not let the radiostations also get away without paying ?
The 300'000 something users are caught braeking the law, against both Metallica and Napsters will so that is there to argue against?
dura lex sed lex! lex! lex!
De lyckliga slavarna är frihetens bittraste fiender, legalisera!!!
They said, "We stopped kicking ass a long time ago, but we're still taking names."
--
wcb
Damn, why oh why did I waste my last moderation point on something trival....
This needs to go way up high, but it won't, all the karma whoring "Yeah, metalica are bad" posts will go up and this will stay at 0.
Thats life I guess.
"Most Open Source Advocates have never produced any art or IP contributions"
Oh please; I am insulted by your childish generalisations.
What's your IP contribution, trolling on /.?
I don't advocate or even condone breaking the law (with the exception of civil disobedience, which serves an important purpose); but being forced to buy on average a dozen songs for each song that you actually want is called "being ripped off", especially when new technologies completely obliterate all remaining technical reasons for this practice.
The issue around mp3's, which you apparently missed, is this:
This is the extremely simple and clear issue that is actually at heart here.
These names are people who have done just that, made the file available for others to share.
over at Salon
.5b
...
/.
The crew have rejected it twice, so I'll burn more karma.
--
To Hilary Rosen. A Retort.
This is a quick dissection of your recent interview with Salon.com. Please respond if you have a moment.
Your quotes are in italics, questions are in bold, my comments are in plain text.
While ultimately I don't think litigation is the right business strategy over the long term,
Would that be 20 years long term? It will take at least that long for a generation to forget.
I do think that Napster is guilty of copyright infringement, and we will have both a favorable court decision and some precedents set for companies that try and commercialize file sharing.
Why is sharing so bad? And I am shocked that you didn't say "commercialize file pirating." Some would call that a Fruedian slip.
There is certainly a lot of intrigue in the notion of file sharing -- for community reasons and for marketing reasons and for putting like people with like-minded interests together.
Nice, it even sounds good coming from you.
Clearly I understand all that.
For some reason I don't believe you.
But those issues really should be divorced from the very unique and specific issue, Does a company have a right to create a system that is so deliberately designed to take other people's work?
Why do we need another divorce? This country needs healing. It needs the power of community. I lost you after "does a company have a right..."
It's interesting in court -- the Napster lawyer tried to make the argument that file-sharing services like Napster actually bring the Internet back to its original purpose and history, which was when university researchers would share their research with their colleagues around the world.
Perish the thought. Please tell me, again, why this is a bad thing for anyone?
That was a very valuable and exciting thing that happened, but there's a principal difference between that activity and what businesses like Napster are engaged in -- it was those professors' works that they themselves were sharing!
Again with the sharing? This is the word we're talking about right? "a : to partake of, use, experience, occupy, or enjoy with others b : to have in common" That's the bad word?
As a practical matter going forward, lawsuits get a lot of headlines and they raise a lot of passion -- I understand that.
Not yet you don't. I still have three friends that haven't heard about you yet.
But ultimately the future of music on the Internet is not going to be about legalities and litigation, it's going to be about how are we bringing music to fans -- new music,
Yes, it is. But I don't think you know what "we" means yet.
established artists -- what are the new business models that people are adopting and how do you make all the new opportunities win-win.
BY SHARING THE MUSIC. YOU HAVE A FREE RESOURCE. USE IT! I can explain this philosophy in great detail if you like. Click that "user info" button and look for a conversation (still ongoing) with Eric the
I don't think anybody has illusions about controlling all transmissions online.
I do (think some have illusions, not have them myself).
The question is, How do you compete if services available to give it away without regard to the creators are allowed to flourish with such customer-service-friendly tools?
If you ask the wrong question, the answer doesn't matter. Remove the words "without regard to the creators" and you are on the right track. The Net is like that, it doesn't really make sense in most traditional terms.
Gnutella is a little harder to use than Napster, but there also ways to enforce against Gnutella users that you don't have with Napster.
Hehe, that would be funny to watch. I don't think you want to try and fight that battle.
Are Napster and online distribution of music causing the record industry to rethink or change its business models?
It doesn't necessarily change -- it expands. I personally believe people will want to buy CDs for a long time to come, [agreed] but I also believe they want to have subscriptions, kiosks in stores and airports, digital downloads
I don't, but then again I'm one of your core customers. At least I used to be.
I believe the expansion is where the conflict and the opportunity arrives. It behooves technology innovators to help develop those concepts in partnership with the music community. It's not accurate to say that the record industry says no.
What is it accurate to say? The record industry says "go for it, we have good lawyers and lots of money?"
There's no question that the industry has been slow to the marketplace, but it's too simplistic to say that the slowness or speed is out of some fear.
Simplicity sells technology. Just something I've noticed. I see fear in all your actions. Most creatures that are panicing don't notice it themselves, but again, those are just my observations.
It's more accurate to say that these are very complex transitions with a lot of interests and players involved -- artists and publishers and distributors and retailers and technology partners. There are a whole host of changes, and new structures that have to be created to move into these worlds.
That's the big problems. There are so many players involved. We need two players. Artists and Fans. Which one are you? We don't need new structures either. We have the Net. It's a new structure, how much of it have you guys built? How much have you tried to destroy? Can you see why we (I) don't like you (plural)?
It's not necessarily what people always want to hear, but I do believe that it is complex.
You just keep on digging into the unnecessy complexities of the business models you have created. I'll be listening to some music.
It's not whether or not somebody is killing CD sales this week -- it's whether music has value, and is perceived to have value in and of itself by fans, and by technology companies and venture capitalists who are investing in new businesses and have to pay for everything from their server space to their telephone lines to their lunchboxes.
Simplify, simplify. How many venture capitalists do you know that would give money to a company that starts out with the idea "First, we sue everyone with a different business model..." (step three: Profit!)
Paying for the content they are using is not an unreasonable request. I think it's a value quotient, not necessarily a piracy fear, that is also important to consider.
You should search this site. I'm sure somebody will give you a clue as to the nature of supply, demand, and value quotients on the Internet. "Not necessarily a piracy fear", I thought you guys weren't scared?
It goes back to the earlier issue that whether or not the record companies and artists are making money selling CDs is irrelevant to Napster; they are building a business on the backs of artists.
And your business would be built where?
Just because [artists] are making money elsewhere doesn't mean Napster has the right to do this. It's a self-serving argument for Napster.
*COUGH*
No one is arguing Chicken Little here;
Sometimes you should listen to a little pen^H^H^Hchicken. The sky has indeed fallen.
what we are saying is that if that geometric [try exponential] progression is such that music has less and less value, ultimately you do get to a scenario where it's hard for the legitimate businesses to compete. No one says we're there, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see where we're going.
No it doesn't. Have you ever seen a fifty-year-old rocket crash into the ground? Be patient. Shouldn't be too long now.
It's an artists issue. Cynics say the record industry doesn't like that model because it takes them out of the equation. But it's not true -- artists like it when they have a record that's so successful that they get to stay home for a few months rather than go on tour.
Do artists also like works for hire? Here's a link from your page. And here's a link about where you paid to get the law changed. And here's one to a quick rundown on how artists fare with your current business model.
You are limiting the artists' choices. And secondly, a significant part of the meaning of the music is creating the demand for the work.
i.e. Marketing. Yea we've heard of it. I don't remember that in my music appreciation class in college though. Must'a skipped that day after a ragin' Rage show.
And creating that demand for the music and the artist is very much a marketing and promotional function the record company does. The costs associated with that have to be absorbed somewhere.
Yes, they do. And we, the fans, would be more than happy to do it. Just let us copy, digitally, our music files (that we bought and paid for) and allow us to take care of that marketing part for you. We'll tell our friends what sucks. And what kicks ass. MP3 is about as good as quality as radio, if you haven't noticed. CD's sound better. They still travel better. They look good on coffee tables. We're not going to stop buying CD (unless you quit fretting and bring us DVD-AUDIO, and yes, it will get broken)
Things will evolve and the industry has always given away music for free, but it's really inappropriate that the only ways that artists should be able to make money off their craft is touring, if in fact people are enjoying their music anyway.
Remember we are paying for that promotion and distrubution so you don't have to. You can take all that money you save and give it straight to the artists. And why don't you give their copyrights back after you stop promoting them? That doesn't seem fair to me, but then again I didn't lobby to have copyright extended for an additional 20 years after death.
Not to mention the whole crop of artists that don't have the ability to tour.
I'm sure studio musicians will still have skills that are useful to somebody. Perhaps they can teach in schools after the sudden revival in the public's taste for live music? I mean, MP3 is great, CDs are better, but you can't beat the real thing. Don't forget that.
What was your reaction when you heard that Napster was sponsoring the Limp Bizkit tour?
I thought Napster must be desperate to have to pay $2 million to get someone to support them.
I think you might have wanted to think about this one for a second or two. Exactly how much did you guys spend last year on Congress? What's the annual promotion budget for New York?
I didn't think it was a thoughtful statement about the long-term economics of the record industry -- it was an anti-establishment, rock 'n' roll publicity thing for them to do.
Yes, and...? You 'member Elvis shaking them hips don'cha? What an anti-establishment, rock n' rock thing for him to do.
There's no question that the multitude of artists who have spoken out against Napster far outweigh this kind of publicity stunt, but I hope that their fans realize that these artists actually care about their work, and care about their art, and care about their ability to keep making it.
No question, eh? No question? Now would that be artists as in "signed, sealed, and delivered on the dotted line" or artists as in "a person skilled in one of the fine arts." I don't remeber seeing that national statistics poll, I must've been asleep at the wheel.
I think if Napster has ideas for alternative business models, they haven't said them yet.
Since when did "put music in the hands of fans" become an alternative business model. What is radio supposed to be? What's MTV for again?
I don't think it's my place to do that. If people are creating businesses that use other people's work like that, it behooves them to come up with some other scenario at the outset that does the right thing. Where they go from here is the subject of obviously complicated scenarios.
Obviously complicated scenaries, i.e. lawsuits. You've got that part of the business plan down pat. Keep the course.
There are mutual responsibilities, but obviously as this case is in litigation, suffice it to say that Napster has never come up with a scenario. And I don't think anybody in the record industry has any indication that that is a viable option.
The record industry? What's a record? Oh, you mean those big plastic CD's? I remember seeing one of those when I was five (and music never sounded so good, analog is a good way to preserve quality, hint, hint) Of course you don't see it as a viable option, that's the problem.
The business models that MP3.com have put forward are interesting business models. The issue with MP3.com is simply of them not seeking licenses prior to the launching of their system.
So you mean in addition to buying your CD, I have to get some ethereal "license" to listen to it? We are talking about my.mp3.com, right? Try and stay on-topic, that's what the lawsuit is about. That, and bankruptcy.
I do get a particular laugh out of technology entrepreneurs who try and say that the record industry has screwed artists over the years. But what is it, now it's their turn?
Oh, we're doing the screwing all right. But the artists have had enough, if you catch my drift. I get a particular laugh too, haw-hah!
We have gone through an interesting shift here. The RIAA is a trade organization that was never a public entity or necessarily had any public profile. So it's quite a different role for us to all of a sudden respond not just to the music community but to the public itself.
The Internet exposes dark organizations. Have you heard about Echelon? Area51? There's some pictures around here somewhere... Unfortunately the power has shifted. You no longer are dealing with someone coming to you for a resource only you control. Now you have to deal with us, and we control the resources.
But I've learned a lot: A lot of people don't know what record companies do and what they bring to the equation -- helping to develop the talent and create the demand. That's been interesting.
Oh, just wait. This party is just getting started. Most of the players aren't even here yet. We live in interesting times, indeed.
When you go to buy a Chevy, you generally know something about General Motors being a decent company.
Define decent for me. I do not think it means what you think it means. (Not a knock on GM, just a question about your example)
When you want to buy a Bruce Springsteen record, you don't think much about Sony Music; that's been deliberate by these companies over the years. As a result, a lot of other people have painted on that blank canvas. If we could do that over, maybe we'd do that differently. But maybe not.
A painting on a black canvas. What an apt metaphor. No wonder it's taken so long to see it clearly.
I cheerfully await a response. I fervently hope that this crosses your desk at some time in the future. I've been harsh, perhaps unnecessarily so, but I hope you can get around my sarcasm and cynicism and see what I have for you here. Don't be afraid to by cynical in response. A little laugh might do us all good at this point. Let's get a conversation going and maybe we can save you some litigation costs.
Thanks,
Roy M. Taylor
a.k.a Wah on
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+&x
This is kind of like Microsoft's Open License program, just for music.
MS's Open License is a marketing ploy to confuse end users about the term "Open"
Product use rights
There are two use rights that are common to all Microsoft Open License customers in addition to rights granted under specific product end-user license agreements (EULAs).
that is to say, "In addition to the rights taken away by EULA.."
Oh, and those new "rights"
Open License grants the right to use different product language versions. Customers must have an initial language version that is the same price or higher than the desired language version.
Wow, I feel so empowered.
Open License grants downgrade rights for all Microsoft products. Downgrade rights allow users to run any prior version of a product for which they have received license confirmations, instead of running the version they acquired.
Woohoo! I am allowed to use old unsupported software at the new price. yaaah!
Did you see this?
Oh, and it's about control of money, IMHO.
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+&x
Someone suggested it on here in a previos napster discussion, and it just made so much sense to me...send the money directly to the band. Cut and paste freely.
Dear Metallica,
I heard a great song of yours because of Napster. I loved it. I loved another song you wrote that I heard off of Napster. So, since I loved it so much, I decided to download the entire CD. I thought to myself, "Gee, this is great music, it's worth the $15". So I sent you the money. Since I did not buy it from a record store and I did not have the address for your Record Label handy, I thought I would send it to you. Your music is a commodity, regardless of whether I get it from Napster or from a record store, but I wanted to show my appreciation for the people who actually make the music, not the people who throw up advertisements everywhere.
Again, thank you for the music, and here is the money I might have spent on a CD.
Sincerely,
An anonymous Napster-using Fan
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
Psychology is only one step above mud pie making.
There is not such thing as a "dynamic address". You have hosts that don't get the same address, but the address itself is just an address. And there isn't any way to identify without making informed guesses from the hostname associated with that address. If the CNAME for 1.2.3.4 is modem72-pool.foo.net you would be safe in assuming that it's probably not permanently associated with a machine.
They don't need to verify that, they just need enough evidence to convince napster. This isn't a court of law, it's Metallica following the proper procedure with Napster to prevent piracy. Napster has said that if they are provided with a pirate's information they will punt that fellow of the network.
Besides if everybody started calling everything "metallica" they get the exact same effect as purging all metallica songs by burying the real goods among 10 times as many fake items. Nobody will be willing to download 60 megs of mp3 just looking for one 3 meg song.
Even if they were paying, I'm sure that napster has a TOS that indicates copyrighted music can't be distributed. You violate the TOS and they can kick you right off without a refund.
I wonder if they are actually going after just the Metallica pirates or everybody who is pirating music. It wouldn't surprise me if the RIAA joined in this in the background and it would make a lot of sense. Sure it may cost some initial up front cost, but nothing like it will cost Napster. And if Napster doesn't take measures to stop each reported offender then they become directly liable and suddenly it costs a lot more. Can you say Bye-Bye Napster.
Napster isn't a human right. You aren't entitled to use Napster. If Napster wants to create a service that only redheads can use, they can.
A fan that isn't paying back in by buying their albums or going to their concerts is no more than a hairs breadth away from a non-fan. And most of the people who only know about Metallica via Napster (which is a bit of an impossibility since most people use the search capabilities rather than the browse capabilities) aren't buying their albums or going to their concerts.
This isn't about catching the pirates. It's about killing off Napster. They are playing by Napster's rules and now Napster has to stick to their policies and block each and every one of those people on that list. If they can present 300,000 people a week via certified mail Napster will have to type in 300,000 people a week. If they can't handle the load then they lose and will have to shutdown or face a very big lawsuit.
Soon as you file, I'll be after that huge pile of cash you call your wallet.
What, you're going to grab his ass?
Sorry you couldn't possibly go after him in a situation like that. First they would show up at your house with a valid search warrant. Then they would tear up your place looking for evidence. Then they would decide if they wanted to sue you. Even if they wanted to sue you, since it's a new area of law that doesn't have precedent to show how it's to be interpreted there is no case for a wrongful suit lawsuit.
No those forms of copying are just legal. And in fact the RIAA/MPAA don't mind at all. You see whenever you buy a cassette recorder or a VCR and each time you buy a blank tape or videotape you pay a special tax that get's sent to the RIAA/MPAA. The theory is that you will be recording their material so you should pay for this material. This happens regardless of why you bought those items. It's stupid, but that's how things have worked out.
The problem they have with making your own mp3s and such is that they don't get paid for each hard drive you purchase. Or for the encoder and such. But it is legal to record from radio, tv, etc.
Probably they could insist that you change the name. Besides if for each real metallica song there are 100 non metallica songs then they've won. Nobody will attempt to get any kind of metallica material of Napster because you don't know what the hell you are getting.
They're smarter than you are. You see Metallica going after users. A smart person sees Metallica causing Napster to have to block 300K of their users. And keep doing it as long as Metallica wants to provide them with names. Eventually the technical and administrative costs will destroy napster. QED.
The host's perspective is irrelevant in this issue. We want to know how some random server can tell if an address is dynamic. You can't. Not to mention that the address isn't the dynamic part, it's the host that changes not the address.
Right. And the address never changes. It's just a set of numbers. The host might change, but the address doesn't.
Hmm... And I thought I had filtering problems.
I guess the guys of metallica aren't smart enough to realize that users can simply re-register with a new username?
sigh...
The next site to slashdot will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and start slashdotting it early!
Rights are no less social constructs than laws and have no more or less fundamental of a basis than the general consensus of a body of people that "Hey! No one should be able to stop someone from doing that." Perspectives on "rights" differ from culture to culture as much as morality and is purely subjective. I could always claim that it's my right to kill people that annoy me.
So, while we're talking about rights, what about copyrights? You know, the right to control what happens with the fruit of your own labor. Your contention that his conflict with those laws is a "morally positive action", but what about his contention with the right of the makers of that music to demand compensation for listening to it? Your "morally positive action" may be another person heinous crushing of their rights.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
...I prefer downloading the MP3's I wanna play on my computer, iso ripping them myself. So what,
that's my right... sue me.
Actually, no it's not your "right."
U.S. law only allows you to make your own copies of your own albums for your own personal use and archival purposes. It is not your right to redistribute those copies to other people or take someone else's copies just because you also own an original. The law's pretty specific in that respect. The good old "delete these files after 24 hrs. if you don't own the original" argument for game ROMs was always an urban myth. Even if you do own it, you can't download it because it's not a copy of the item you own, even though, bit-for-bit, they are identical.
Of course, the RIAA is trying to take that away too with the AHRA, which prohibits making perfect digital copies of music. This piece of legislation got pushed through over DAT recorders and is still being challenged in courts, AFAIK. Personally, I hope it dies hard. It makes no sense to allow us to copy things for "archival purposes" only in degradeable formats.
If I name my "FreeSong" by "Free Cool band"
Unforgiven_Metallica.mp3. How will they know?
Now you're just guilty of a different kind of copyright infringement.
If you do it the other way around, then nobody will download them because they don't know they're actually Metallica, and you've become unimportant to the RIAA compared to the more blatant traders. This is only good for trading between friends who know what you actually have, but Napster is an inefficient model for that compared to just setting up an FTP server with user logins. Seems pointless to me unless you're playing a malicious joke on Napster users.
"This isn't Barry Manilow? What is this crap??"
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
"Attorneys for Metallica say they hired NetPD, an online consulting firm, to monitor the Napster service this past weekend. The firm came up with more than 335,000 individual users who had made the band's content available online, the lawyers said."
To me it sounds like they paid someone a lot of money to type Metallica in the Artist field, click Find It, and write down usernames.
I can't really say that there is any compelling argument to defend pirating music, but let's not forget that the music industry really brings this on themselves when they mark up the price of CD's so high. It costs less than a dollar to produce a CD w/ the jewel box and liner notes, but it sells for $15+. Just bring down the fucken price and the music industry will still be making millions, and the price will seem a lot more reasonable.
I know they are making money off thier music, and being a "big name" they're making more then the average musician. Even being a big name, they aren't making as much as this label/distributor. Dr. Dre on the other hand, owns the label, so he's losing twice.
Also, How do you ban these people? Is it impossible for 335,000 users to own metallica albums? Rember, they usta be good. I have Nine Inch Nails on my hard drive, and own all the CD's. Is there some part of "fair use" I don't understand when it comes to mp3s?
Snoop
>Computers and general-purpose computer peripheral devices are not covered by the Audio Home Recording Act. This means they do not pay royalties and they do >not incorporate technology to prevent serial copying. As a result, this also means that copying music onto a computer hard drive is not permitted. It is copyright >infringement, and a violation of federal law. This is true whether the source being copied is analog or digital; whether you are copying an entire album or just one song >or even part of a song; or whether you are making a compilation of songs from albums you already own.
I see.. Thanks..
But now, this raises other questions in my mind, like how do devices like the Rio operate within the law? Do they pay a royalities to the RIAA?
Does that make the software for ripping CD's legal only if the ripped song is then downloaded to a MP3 device within X amount of time? If I rip my entire CD collection in order to download 3 or 4 songs at a time to my Rio, am I in violation of the law? I currently don't own a device like that, but if anyone out there could tell me if there is agreement with the Rio that says something like "you have 1 day to download a ripped mp3 to your Rio, otherwise your in violation of Federal law, blah blah BLaH!"
A CD to CD copy is legal, as long as a computer is not used, according to the definition given by the RIAA, but the copy has to fall within fair use right? So, If I'm a teacher, and I want my class to listen to "whoever" to understand the historical impact of their music, I can give each and every student of mine a complete, perfect copy of the CD, as long as the CD-R I use is stand-alone and not hooked up to a harddrive. This seems like something the RIAA would not like. Any Jamacian history teachers want to do this with a Bob Marley CD? I'll help raise funds to pay for the blank disks.
Also, I quote:
>...for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of >copyright.
I do not see in this law where I can legal have a copy in my car, or tape my favorite episode of the Simpsons. Potentially, I could get pulled over tonight for running a redlight, and end up in federal prision for my tape copy of Nirvana and Pearl Jam (I own the CDs, BTW), and the copy of Sundays Simpsons under the seat. I enjoy the music/show, but I'm not a teacher, critic, scholar, researcher, news reporter or do commentaries. Is this actually the case? The law seems restrictive to the point where VCRs and Tape decks shouldn't be able to record without a special license and a represenitive from the MPAA/RIAA in the room at all times.
Humm.. It looks like I have some research to do....
Snoop
Let Metallica go and ban me for trading one song. I downloaded I Disappear. Why? Because it wasn't out on the radio, but I wanted to hear it. But good god, I must be making them lose money. Yeah, that's why I own every album between Kill 'Em All through (The Never...sorry bad pun) through S&M. I even bought their boxed set and own every video they put out. Toss in a dozen or so t-shirts, posters, three concerts, and other miscellanious paraphanalia. Yeah...I'd have to say that I should be banned .
IIRC you can be under 18 years of age and still use napster. What about all those people who are 18 that like to download public domain music? There is a lot of great stuff that I wouldn't have been able to get if a CC# was needed, since I caved in 4 months ago and got a Visa (just for EverQuest).
I went there, being the naive internet luser I apparently am, thinking some good was going to come out of it, boy was I wrong.
Let me tell you what I experienced:
1. All the questions the moderator asked were strangely written by PEOPLE WHO WERN'T THERE.
2. All the questions, except the second one, I think, were truely weak, as if written entirely by lawyers to solicit the kind of answers they wanted to be heard.
3. The band never saw any of the public chat going on.
4. My very thought out question about me buying S&M because I heard an mp3 off of it, and that the RIAA posted a 12.3% 90 billion dollar sales increase last year, was not asked.
5. The thing didn't even last a full hour.
6. Metallica thinks that Napster is apparently providing the content and not the users. Lars said a few times they wanted "napster to take us off their lists".
7. Metallica apparently has a gripe about napster sponsoring Limp Bizkit (they said it was wrong that this large company was paying Limp Bizkit to perform, and not the kids). Even though I don't like Limp Bizkit, isn't this what all record labels do? And don't other bands take on sponsors?
8. Lars says "it isn't about the money" on one line, but says "napster is a middle man cutting us out" on another. Which is it?
9. Metallica wants the government to police the internet, they want congress to bring out new laws against this, and they think what they're doing is for the good of all artists, they clearly stated their goal, to put Napster out of business.
In conclusion, I belive this "live chat" was one hell of a fabrication, kudos to Yahoo for duping alot of people into showing up and wasting their time so we can hear uninformed idiots (Metallica) rant.
-- iCEBaLM
"Mr. President? Napster just banned 20,000 of your user accounts..."
Don't want to be fingered? Use these instead:
Mattelica: Heavy metal toys
Metallicker: Slurp--Mmmm, Iron
Mateallica: Groupie
Meterllica: "Please insert $1 to hear song"
Melittaca: Available in regular or decaf.
---
> They want to share music! What's wrong with that?
They are giving away music that they don't have the right to give away. I have a hard time understanding how someone can so stupid that they don't understand that this is wrong.
Copying is stealing because you are getting access to something that has a price without paying that price. Sure it's not as bad as stealing a car, but it's still stealing. And whatever term you want to use is actually irrelevant since it's still wrong and illegal.
It's easy for Metallica to prove a case by case basis. (i.e. This is no scare tactic) Metallica would simply show the Napster people a screenshot showing people with Metallica Mp3's and then say that they have not given permission for their music to be in mp3 format. Then Napster is required to block everyone who uses the Metallica Mp3's or at least everyone who came up when Metallica did a search and their name came up.
Duh - it's easy to prove a case by case basis. Yes, usage of Napster does not demonstrate copyright infringment, but if used IMPROPERLY (piracy) it might be illegal (at least in the courts - i.e. it's okay to own a gun, most of the time however it's not okay to use the gun to kill a person. - While the gun company is not responsible - the police still take the gun away. So look at it this way - Napster is not responsible for the illegal trading of mp3's, but the Fed's can still confiscate the program if it is being used in that way.)
Understand? - Honestly though, Napster probably will lose in the courts. If the tabacco industry loses for not doing enough to prevent people from smoking - even when they made the choice to smoke (recent florida court case) Napster will lose also - eventually.
Hotline and like programs have not gotten sued by the industry because they actually have a group that goes and looks for pirated software (for Hotline it's known as the infamous Sadwyw Bot and Room 22). Because they take SOME preventave action they are left alone. Correct me if I'm wrong - but Napster takes NONE. That is why they will lose...
This post is not troll, flamebait or like - it is simply my opinion. Also if you're responding to this post please don't pick it apart when you reply - because combined Ideas make sense, split up anyone can criticize them.
Thanx.
Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?
I'm exhausted, (funny, considering the current Slashdot poll) so I'll simply say that yes, the media has a lot to do with it, and that yes, you can't paint everyone with one brush.
Hockey over... Must sleep.
------
If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
You say that killing trees will do almost nothing. This makes you rather ignorant. If you want to live life wearing an oxygen mask, go ahead, lumber those trees. Not only will Carbon Monoxide (a gas which humans don't take too well to) increase, but oxygen will decrease. To enlighten your ignorance, this is due to the fact that trees breath carbon monoxide and expel oxygen. Without trees and forage, humans are as good as extinct.
Two mistakes:
First, plant life consumes carbon dioxide, not carbon monoxide.
Second, recent estimates say that 90% of the world's oxygen is produced by life in the world's oceans. Even if this estimate is extremely high, all the figures put out by environmentalist extremist groups is still inaccurate. Coming down on plastics, I can accept. Cutting down trees is bad, I agree - leave the wildlife habitats alone, and the wildlife won't be wandering through our cities. However, claiming that cutting down the rainforest will suffocate us all to death is a little extreme.
Off topic, I know, but environmentalists like the folks who've been swarming the whale hunts in Washington on jetskis, of all things, are too hypocritical to take.
So, my summary:
Environmentalists and their sympathisers blind themselves to the facts too often in the pursuit of saving cute and cudly animals.
------
If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
Thank goodness for Tipper Gore and the PMRC! They saved me from getting sued! If I hadn't been shown the evils of the Devil's Music (aka "Rock and Roll") I'd be in court right now!
darren
Cthulhu for President!
(darren)
i was about to reply to "absolutely disguisting" post (by frac) but mr. slippery beat me to it. aw well... here goes nothing... what frac does not seem to get (among other things pointed out by mr. slippery, above) is that:
...?
1) that an action is a crime does not necessarily imply that the action is wrong
2) "if you made more valuble intellectual property like metallica, you would think unrestricted copying is wrong too" is a *really* shitty argument (my system of ethics is not a function of how much money i have or how i got it)
3) that someone who posts elegantly stated opinions that differ from your own is not necessarily a zealot
4) that ratting (or even saying your going to rat, rhetorically) to the riaa about irc mp3 leeches "just to piss you zealots off" makes him look like a fucking idiot. even assuming zealots, what good would pissing em off do? none. and if the "pissing off the zealots" bit was rhetorical, what purpose did it serve, other then to declare to the world that "I, FRAC, AM A SHORTSIGHTED VENGEFUL IDIOT, WHO IS COMPLETLY INCAPABLE OF MAKING WELL-REASONED ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT OF MY OPINIONS!!!"
cmon, frac, say it with me: "THERE ARE NO "NAUTRAL" RIGHTS; "PROPTERTY" IS A CONCEPT IN OUR HEADS THAT EXISTS NOT BECAUSE IT IS A UNIVERSAL ONTOLOGICAL PRIMATIVE OR AN EXPRESSION OF A UNIVERSAL MORAL RIGHT, BUT BECAUSE IT WORKS WELL IN MANY PROBLEM DOMAINS, AND SO IS AN EMERGANT PROPERTY THEREOF. WHEN THE CONCEPT "PROPERTY" DOES NOT WORK IN A PROBLEM DOMAIN, IT SHOULD NOT BE APPLIED TO THAT PROBLEM DOMAIN! THE RELM OF INFORMATION IS ONE SUCH PROBLEM DOMAIN!"
i could go on, but, because i'm hungry, i won't.
-- sayke, v2.3.05
I thought this snippet of Metallica lyrics was appropriate to the situation, from Shortest Straw on the ... And Justice For All album.
[...]
Blacklisted
With vertigo make you dead
Shortest straw
Challenge liberty
Downed by law
Live in infamy
Rub you raw
Witchhunt riding through
Shortest straw
The shortest straw has been pulled for you
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm just paranoid, whats your excuse?
I never said that copying was not illegal, I said that it was not theft (because it doesn't take anything away from anyone else), not immoral, and that the laws against it are irrelevant because they're unenforcable (short of police state "War on Drugs" tactics, which fail anyway and get people killed in the process). I address this more is another post in this thread.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
And then here we have Metallica. Another big group that Goths tend to follow. This should prove once for all to all the Goth sheep and religious nuts that these "satanic" groups are in the entertainment business and it's all a show, just like WWF. The only God that Metallica worship is the almighty dollar.
Hey, I get into a lot of their music, and sometimes identify with their lyrics, but I'm not going to create my own personal religious beliefs around it.
From their web site, Metallica says ""We recognize that this is a very complicated issue with larger implications that our fans may not completely understand." Yeah, they are right. There is no way I can comprehend the amount of money they make each year! :)
Don't get me wrong. I am not for stealing music you don't pay for. I just find it highly ironic that a band like Metallica is leading the charge. It should be someone like Britney Spears or Garth Brooks.
Yeah, I'm going to lose karma like hell for this one, but what good is having high karma if you can't speak your mind, get some 15-year-old /. reader pissed off, and lose some of it once in a while! :-)
If they did that then they'd lose most of their user base, I'd bet. Many (if not most) of napsters users are teenagers in HS or college...given many college students have credit cards....most HS students do not (some do of course).
While I agre with you that Metallica is acting stupidly, in terms of the current leagality of the situation, they are right. Even if you do own the CD, if the songs come up in a Napster search then they are availible for others to download, which is distributing a copyrighted work. Even making digital copies with your computer for your own use is questionable and yet to be tested in court.
Spencer Ogden
I beleive it's illegal to distribute them, even if you own the copy you've got. So having Napster block you from distributing that MP3 is more then fair.
Extra problem: [renaming]
Certainly, in the 335,000 songs that they found, no more than 1% are spoofed. I would say that this would require Napster to set up some sort of appeals process or something.
Granted, NOW everyone might change their songs to "Metallica (really: Hoku - Dumb Blond)" or something. But when they did the scan before, I bet most were ligit.
--
I believe that such a service would be legal? You can't reconstruct the song from the hash... it seems to be about as important as the music title.
--
I think CmdrTaco mentioned something about this last week. As soon as they finish shooting a video, or something?
I'd REALLY like to be in on this interview.
Sure, they're going to have a hard time tracking down all of these users, and prosecuting ANY of them. I'm sure the number's inflated, but you don't really think that there are only 4000 users on Napster at any given time, right?
There are many napster servers. You can easily prove this by logging on, submitting a search, not finding the song, re-connecting, and finding the song.
If there are 8 napster servers, each with the 4000 users you've seen, we've got ~10% of the 333k users Metallica claims to be pursuing. Plus, we don't know how often users log in and out.. I don't think that 1/4 million users distributing Metallica IP on napster is impossible.
You mean I'm NOT supposed to type in my REAL email address?
What about on IRC. It's still ok to put in my real name in the "Real Name" box, right?
(-:
The same thing happened over at yahoo chat. Went in to ask a few questions and watched as the "moderators" who weren't there and the "band" who also wasn't there and the whole time everything that they were saying read like a press release. It was almost cute, but you could tell it was being faked by the timing involved (damn that Lars is one fast typist sometimes, the occasional typo isn't fooling anyone...)
What a friggin' rip. Should have just emailed 'em. I'm not about to now though; if they'll only listen to the money, I'm not buying any more of their CD's, encouraging my friends not to buy them, etc.
Ah ... now it becomes clear: RIAA via Electra records pressure Metallica into suing MP3 as condition of continued distribution.
RIAA cannot sue MP3 directly because of adverse publicity from artists ["No I am no suing because I don't own my own music"]
So they choose a band who has rejected the slavery deals. Probably offered them improved distro. I see an awful lot of Metallica's new S&M CD out in non-heavy-metal channels. And then use this "fredom loving" band to reduce listener freedom.
The Greatful Dead must be laughing so hard as to bust a gut!
The fact that napster really can't keep abusers out of their network is just one more reason to shut them down untill they can. They need some kind of system that validates email address and doesn't allow things like hotmail and geocities accounts that are just as easy to get as napster accounts.
Is there a difference between the mp3 i ripped from a CD i own and an mp3 of the same song i got from someone on napster? I say yes, they may have the same digital data, bit for bit, but one is a copy of a CD i own and the other is a copy of a CD that someone else owns. I'm tempted to say that its ok for me to have the copy i made but not the copy the other person made, they are different, every CD is distinct even if it has the same digital data on it, at some level they are at least a little bit different. So now if i destroy my CD, and have never made a copy of it, or a backup of any kind, is it ok for my friend to give me a copy of theirs? is it ok for some big central distribution center, unrelated to the creator of the orginal CD, to give me a copy of the destroyed CD, even if i can prove that i owned it at some point. I guess i'm leaning towards No. If i didn't back it up myself and it is destoryed, its my own fault(or the fault of someone who is responsible) and i(or the responsible party) should have to go buy a new copy from the creator. It seems like I have the right to back up my copy and keep it safe but i really don't have the right to someone elses backup of their CD. And as such even getting mp3s of CD's i already own, from napstere really isn't right. So the way i see it, i have the right to make mp3's of my CD's, but not to grab mp3's made from other people's cd's.
That posting of yours about Metallica being in the right was nothing more than serious flamebait looking for moderation to earn points, you karma whore!
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
There will be a sequence of events:
First: Napster is as good as dead. They will not be able to survive the barrage of lawsuits. Deal with it.
Second: User base will shift to Gnutella. Gnutella unfortunately is not perfect.
Third: Some big band (A puppet of the RIAA) will compile a list of IP addresses of people serving up their music and sue them to make an example. This will be enough to scare people away from Gnutella.
Fourth: User base will shift to FreeNet. Not much anyone can do here. Short of a law prohibiting people from running FreeNet client software and raiding peoples houses.
Fifth: The RIAA will realize this is a futile battle and try to embrace Napster like distribution.
Sixth: By then, many people will be so disappointed with their former idols that they wont care any more. Most big recording bands stopped being artists a long time ago. Independent musicians will increase in popularity. They will be glad people are listening to their art and will not be focused on the monetary return.
How they made the request will be relevant.
If they send Napster a nice text file on a couple floppies, this won't be a huge issue for Napster. Just hack up a quick Perl script. Everyone gets a new userID, everyone's happy.
If the send Napster a 7000 page printed document of user names... They would be obliged to remove the names, pretty much by hand.
The quick solution of course is to dump all the existing user names. 98% of them are probably expired already...
I can see it now...
Napster User: Why did you drop my username?!?
Napster: Are you SURE you weren't pirating Metallica?
Napster User: Uh... I can't remember!
Napster: We thought so...
control is money.
It would be intersting to see if we can get the Metallica guys for a Slashdot Interview. I'm sure slashdot's audience can come with some questions that'll be better than the 'net at large.
'I ain't a liar, baby, and I ain't proud I just want what I'm not allowed.' -- Violent Femmes, 36-24-36
By trivially encrypting or obfuscating user info, surely it would be a federal offense in the US for Napsters lawyers to recover this information?
Since under the DMCA any attempt to bypass a copy-protection scheme, however feeble, is an offense.
Surely Napster owns the copyright on it's 'database' of users - didn't Metallica's lawyers illegally copy and republish this information? Surely it's Napsters right to maintain control over the addresses of it's users - The RIAA is copying them and using this information to make a profit.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
I feel genuinely sorry for Metallica. It must be even worse to be old and lame after once being young and cool. Now they're like old folks wandering the puke-green halls of a nursing home, wondering what the hell is going on. The world has changed and they just don't get it.
If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.
- I like pudding.
Some of the comments expressed so far in support of Metallica seem to have judged the users of Napster as already being guilty. Should Napster ban users simply because Metallica says they are trading illegal mp3's? Should police come and drag you away to jail for 10 years simply because I said so?
I think that Metallica will have do more to prove that these people were really illegally trading their songs. They will have to check that the filenames that they saw being transferred were indeed Metallica songs and that the user does not have the right to do so. Just because I rename my entire collection of 5MB text files to "Metallica - Seek and Destroy.mp3" and share them out over Napster does not make me a pirate. Stupid, but not a pirate.
http://bike.stu.ph/rides - free GPS routes available for Garmin, Magellan, GPX and Google Earth
Musicians are very much indentured servants. (indentured servitude was a predecessor of slavery in the early colonial days).
The difference between Musicians and slaves are that the musicians AGREED to the terms that were offered them (a choice as a musician, I will not take), while the slaves were just taken without asking.
-- Bucket
> Is there some part of "fair use" I don't understand when it comes to mp3s?
Nope.
Metallica just seems to think that everyone trading MP3s are "guilty that must be proven innocent."
> I remember, way back in Roman times...
Anyone have a link to the full story?
Never heard this story (or moral) before..
Is there any way you can legally buy the right to listen to only one track of a cd? or are they 'bundling' good songs with others songs and requiring that you buy them all. Definitely sounds like an Anti-trust thing to me.
Okay, so they lock user Foo from logging in. Damn! Now I'll have to re-register the login Bar. Then Baz... etc.
They could block IP's but that would seriously piss off a lot of people, probably to the point of a class-action suit against them.
Lars must have thought of this one.
- even though, bit-for-bit, they are identical
Actually, digital audio extraction from CD's doesn't generate exact duplicates. Copy the same audio track from the same CD in the same drive twice in a row and compare them. I'd bet at least _one_ bit will be different. A copy extracted from a different drive will almost certainly have differences. Just changing the drive speed can make a difference.There can be conciderable differences between to copies and your ears never be able to detect a difference.
- We of the north went down, kicked some ass, and requested...
Umm, The North kicked The South's collective ass, but then requested they stop using slaves? Rrrriiiiiggght.You better watch out... The South will rise again! (Suddenly a memory of one of the last Tonight Show's w/Carson comes to mind... he made the mistake of booking Jonathan Winters and Robin Williams on the same show. Winters was dressed in a full Confederate General's outfit
I would recommend reading any of a number of documents on CD physical formats. CD-Audio is stored in 2352 byte blocks which (mostly) fills the entire _physical_ block on the disk. There are no control codes, error correction codes, or checksums at all. What the laser pickup head sees is what you get -- minus filters and jitter correction. It is entirely possible to get two different copies due to scratches, dust, vibrations, spindle speed, etc. In the perfect world, a pit is a pit and a land is a land -- and always is. But the world is far from perfect.
CD-Data is stored with full ECC using 2048 bytes of user data per block. That's why CD's hold less data that the equiv. amount of audio. That's also why data on a CD is _always_ read back correctly or the drive (usually) signals an error.
In true /. fashion we could all quite easily download some mp3.com heavy metal bands free mp3s, rename them to "Metallica-The Metallica Effect" and then share them on napster. This would cause a glut of users who would probably be fingered as "sharing" Metallica mp3s, who wouldn't be breaking any copyright laws.
This has been probably be mentioned...but, how can they prove that all of them are trading Metallica music? Is it illegal to put 'Metallica' in a song name now? Did they download those thousands of user's mp3s? I suspect that they are going to have a fun time proving this, and that they'll find users will boycott them instead. I know I will.
If Metallica does get money this way they have an obligation to pass most if not all of that cash to the record company. Its the company that invests, promotes, and produces this Backstreet Boys for AlternaTeens band. Instead of handing them this legaly dangerous money just donate the $15 bucks to charity unders Lars's name.
I can't wait to see the next press release if this catches on, "Pirates, stop donating my money to charity!"
Maybe if Napster started to require a verifiable CC#... people normally don't have that much plastic, and usually not with different names and/or billing addresses...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
If Metallica and the music industry is "successful" and shuts down Napster completely and then record sales drop because people won't buy albums they haven't previewed. I can only speak for myself, but I know that of all the mp3s I have, I probably would have only bought one or two of the albums containing the songs if I didn't have the mp3s. By the same token, I have bought four or five CDs because of the mp3s I downloaded and couldn't get out of my head. So in the end, the recording industry has actually benefitted from the presence of mp3s. Maybe if they'd take a second and look at their record (as in higher than ever before) sales and the beginning of the popularity of music on the internet, perhaps they'd see a correlation?
I agree. They are not about the music anymore. The Sad but True thing is they used to be, at least they seemed that way. I should've seen this coming tho when load came out...i thought maybe it was a stunt, and they'd go back to thier older music. But i guess its not...the minute you demand payment to create your art, you are no longer an artist. Hopefuly their bus will slip off the grand canyon or something. To think, i used to worship them...
Well let me ask you this. Is it illegal if i, who already owns the cd a song is on, downloads a song from someone else, who also owns the same cd? At any rate, i think copyright and patents need to be nixed, right now. They were designed to protect artists and inventors. Well, now it is a tool for large corperations to screw over as many people as possible. I'm tired of gov't sanctioned abuses by coroperations.
You're the fucking asshole simpleton. You don't even know what art is. Wake up dumbass, there is a little bit of a differnce between a fucking cookie (which any idiot can make, by the way) and art. An artist lives to express his ideas in the music he creates, or paintings he paints, or statues he sculpts. They want to make people think in new directions, make them feel things deeply. That usually means they want thier art to be seen/heard/otherwise experienced. Metallica is now the equivelent of these fucking MCSEs; these know-nothing, ignorant, bullheaded morons that wouldn't know a network socket from thier ass. You know, the people responsible for creating the messes i usually have the displeasure of cleaning up. Oh, i won't be starving by a long shot dude. i've been w/my current employer 6 months, and i've already had 2 raises amounting to a 40% increase in my pay. I charge for my coding skills, its a nice thing to be able to create my art, as you put it, and get paid for it. But i would still code even if i wasn't being paid for it. Its all a matter of where your intrests lie. Mine are in coding, and then making money. These idiots are in making money, then playing music. Goto hell you anonymous coward.
Oh, i am sorry, i made some typos when i was typing. I'm sure you're perfect and never have made any when typing quickly. So i guess then that was the biggest fault you could find with my post. Fuck off dumbass.
Wouldn't sending $15 to Metallica be like 8 times the share they see from an album sold by their label?
Gee, I only hope they go after me.. I have been on Napster, searching for and downloading Metallica, for the last week or so. Why? My Garage, Inc. discs look like a chainsaw was dragged over them, (one was) and I needed to fill in the holes I couldn't rebuild. I'll even show them the three copies of MOP I own!! I hope Guns and Roses are next to sue me. I snagged Use your Illusion I & Appetite for Destruction via Napster this morning. Forgot my CD's at home.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Long story short, I think I can get an address where I could send something so that Jason Newstead might actually get it. I won't be distributing this address online, but I am willing to coordinate a "Send Metallica's stuff back" campaign (at least on a small scale :) to show them how we really feel.
My rationale for this is not that "I think the record companies are the real pirates, fsck them, take all their money," although I do feel that way sometimes. My point in this is that Metallica , by first suing napster and then taking actions against individuals, is just becoming a corporate mouthpeice.
Lars' accusation that trading music on Napster turns it into a "commodity" is a patent misinterpretation of music distribution these days. Contrary to the time when Metallica would give shows anywhere, talk directly to fans, and even give away truck loads of new equipment to startup bands, this demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding and lack of compassion towards their fanbase.
So, if you want to send your metallica albums, shirts, whatever, back and tell them what you think about this action, mail me (address spam-proofed above). Furthermore, I don't want this to be just a "slashdot thing," so tell your friends who you think would care.
Not at Metallica or the RIAA or Dr. Dre...but at the internet community for letting this happen. OK...I've never used Napster..."truly" but I after hearing such news makes me wanna dl a copy asap! We need to get more ppl into this...335k aren't enough to make a point...how bout a million or two geeks with every metallica album they own shared on napster, now thats worth a stink! Personally, I like Metallica, but they got enough of my money from album sales/concert tickets that I should be able to do whatever the f**k I want with all the damn music I bought from them...yeah, and don't forget the T-Shirts/other paraphenalia. C'mon they aren't hurting one bit...I'm urging all you geeks out there to join the napster revolution and download a copy (if you haven't already) and do your worst. Right now the line-up is 335,000 vs. 4???? What the heck? If we make the ration 250,000:1 we'll at least go down swinging! We won't go quietly into the night!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sorry for the rant!
What are the possibilities of this working?
We get some bands (even small local ones). Maybe a large group of bands. Then we file a lawsuit against the groups that are attacking the mp3 format. We say that they are destroying our band's ONLY way of making money and that they are engaging in anti-competitive practices by making it impossible for "The Little Guy" to get his name out.
Would this be feasible? We wouldn't have the funding to do it ourselves, but once we start the fight others might pitch in.
Also, would the Justice Department (oxymoron?) pitch in? They attack MS, whey not the music industry?
--
The shareholder is always right.
How did Metallica track down all 300k+ users who shared their mp3's? (That sure is a lot.) The only information I ever provide to napster is a user-name, and an email address, that being anon@napster.com or something. Do they run a port-scan or something? Sure they know lots of user names, but suppose napster doesn't ban them -- do they have 300 thousand IP's logged? It makes me wonder how many napster users really thought they were anonymous.
Anyway, has anyone with more skillz than me tried to track down a napster user?
In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -Carl Sagan
What about all those people on the internet using Napster who have never heard of some of the bands out there which have involvement with record labels and the RIAA? What if that person had no clue who Metallica was because it was some 14 year old girl into country music or something and downloaded it thinking it was just another one of those unsigned bands out there in the world that you are able to distribute legally on the net? Could this work in a person's defense, especially since they never saw any copyright disclamer to begin with. It would only be the distributor that the RIAA could go after and not everyone who downloaded the MP3. The user was probably mal-informed, or could claim that defense, especially if they don't already own any Metallica CDs. Since Napster is worldwide, there are a lot of labels out there which people haevn't heard of and there is no way out there to really figure out if a band is signed or not without spending time in the search engines finding out. For instance, In Australia, there's Killing Heidi which goes through Wah Wah Music and is distributed by Warner Music. Most people here in the United States don't know about the band. What if the band compiles a list of everyone who downloads their songs and turns it in demanding that these people get banned? How could these people have possibly known? It's not played mainstream in the US. Anyone have any insight into this?
As the press release says "Hold nothing back: this is Metallica, after all. They can take it."
It's worth a try. If Metallica actually were persuaded it would help a lot. I won't be home so I won't be able to join in. If I were able to I'd arrange my thoughts ahead of time so I could cut and paste them.
However, we all know this is going to be a moderated conversation. There will be a million questions submitted and they'll choose the questions that they've already got prepared answers for (probably.) It would be really cool if it were a real "chat" but I have a hard time believing it could possibly be anything like that.
numb
That the Open Source Movement seemingly supports these hardened criminals is ludicrous. No wonder no one takes you seriously, you seem like a bunch of children screaming "Mine! Mine! All mine!".
Hardened criminals? Anyway, it's not the OSS people that sound like children screaming "Mine! Mine! All Mine!" It's the RIAA plants that have shown up in the forum that fit that description.
As far as my feelings go I'll continue to resist anyone that tries to close off distribution channels for music on the Internet. If the RIAA could find a way to stop their music from being distributed without screwing it up for everyone else I'd say "more power to ya."
I know it must be upsetting to the RIAA that people on here don't seem to care about their rights and such. Speaking for myself alone, it's because I understand the technology to realize that you can't stop it--at least not without stopping everyone else from being able to distribute their own music. That's why the issue of copyright infringement means so little to me in this case--because it's freedom of speech and expression that will get choked to stop this so-called piracy. I'm sure I'm not the only one that feels that way, but I can't speak for everyone.
The RIAA wants things to be "business as usual" as it's been for the last 50 years. I won't just sit here and let that happen.
numb
I agree that it's probably too late to single out Metallica for this kind of treatment, but I've often wondered... what would happen if the record labels suddenly started getting letters, phone calls, and e-mails saying, "I like this song and want to purchase a license for the MP3. No, I don't want the whole album and I'm not going to buy it at $15 for the one song I want."
This is kind of like Microsoft's Open License program, just for music.
Do you think it would actually work, or is it really just about control and not money or legality?
How can the eyes be the Windows of the soul when they never blue screen?
Here is a link to another story describing how Chuck D (PUBLIC ENEMY) has taken the side of Napster in this whole debacle. You may also remember that PE dumped their record label a few years ago and was one of the first (if not THE first) major recording artist to release an album using ONLY electronic distribution.
Nice to see Chuck is still FIGHTING THE POWERS THAT BE!
-The Reverend
-The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)
=(.\')=
hey coward,
please forgive me for not having read every single comment of every single story ever posted on slashdot. I'll try harder to live up to your standards in the future. (asshole)
-The Reverend
-The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)
=(.\')=
I said....
/. that I haven't read.
please forgive me for not having read every single comment of every single story ever posted on slashdot. I'll try harder to live up to your standards in the future. (asshole)
Then this anonymous guy said:
no, cocksucker, you seem to misunderstand. there was an entire article about this. you truly are a redundant piece of shit.
To which I reply:
Jeez, man. Try to understand the context within which something is being said, and then try to relate that context with the MEANING behind it... perhaps I should've illustrated my point in big blinking red letters so that you could understand:
POINT: There are many, many articles posted on
POINT: I don't research or spend time looking through archived articles to make sure that a point I'm about to make hasn't already been made by someone, somewhere else, at some other time. That would be a waste of my time. (As if appealing to your ability to reason wasn't.)
POINT: Even if someone HAD posted this story before, there is a chance (a very good chance, I would say, since I myself missed the first posting) that others might not have read it, and that they might find the information relevant to the current discussion, perhaps even USEFUL.
POINT: You're not an asshole because you clued me in to the fact that it had been posted before. You're an asshole for assuming that I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER. Some of us do other things with our time besides troll anonymously for first posts on slashdot.
I will not waste any more of my time or anyone else's by replying to any further responses from anonymous cowards on this subject.
-The Reverend
-The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)
=(.\')=
If Metallica has no use for new ways of music distribution then I have no use for Metillica. Sorry Lars.
I understand that they feel as though they are getting ripped off - but there are far better ways to deal with the situation than to simply out and out attack your fans like that.
Surely they must understand how expensive CD's are, especially to the younger listeners.
Did sales of their albums go up or down last year? I'm just curious.
Either way. They can be closed-minded about Napster and MP3's and so on. And they can also be left behind while everyone else moves forward.
I have deleted any Metallica MP3's I had, thrown away the CD's I had and will no longer support them in any fashion. I'm through.
Good luck boys.
Open source music!!
Or would that be open sheet music?
Yeah!
Milions of former linux-geeks start spending their free time working and reworking their open source songs until those songs are the most stable, versatile, extendible of the planet...
or would stable versatile music made by several thousand different people be boring?
Metallica provides us with something we want but cannot legally obtain ourselves and it's just fair that we pay them for that.
Theft is theft even when you're stealing from a group of very rich guys, even when the chance of getting caught is zero because everybody on the web is an anonymous coward.
If you have such significant problems with paid music, do the sensible thing, start an "open music" movement, protest, write letters, bla.... Just using the fact that you think metallica "charges to much" for their music or whatever as an excuse for theft is really weak.
If any of the people complaining about metallica really felt strongly about what they're shouting the ACLU would have had ten times the membership it has, or there would have been a free music foundation where artists deposit the rights to older songs when they think they've gotten enough out of that music, so as to let everybody copy it to hearts content.
Right now napster users are just criminals (albeit very small ones) that are complaining they got caught.
---Electronic Shock Resistance? Root Mean Square? why is everybody discussing that here?---
The important thing to understand here is that this is not about money. Metallica, Dr. Dre and the RIAA are trying to curtail internet music in general, before it *does* start to hurt them where it counts (in thier wallets). They seriously believe that they will be able to stop illegal distribution of MP3's and the like. I find it humorous...
An entire generation is growing up with the idea that music should be free if you want it and know how to find it. Napster just made that easier. There is no way to stop us! "Information wants to be free." So, I ask the Metallica, Dr. Dre and the RIAAssh0les to try and stem the MP3 revolution. They may have won a battle, but there is no way they can win the war.
-Mark Radtke
radrik2001@yahoo.com
P.S. - I would welcome email from anyone interested in carrying on intelligent discussion on the recent MP3 debate.
Having written songs since 1977, and spent countless years and dollars trying to get them demo-ed by the RIA and it's various auspices, I embrace the established, published "artists?" rebellion to this technology.
Clearly, it's not about the music. Any songwriter worth his/her creative angst would kill to be that 1 in 1000 who finally gets published, let alone produced.
I hope every established artist out there in fear for what might come up through the ranks unobstructed by the Record Industry Machine sues their fans. Perhaps then, we'll actually get uncensored creations untainted by the promoters who eventually reap the lion's share of the proceeds.
And, yes, there will emanate a tremendous amount of shitty music. But, won't it be nice to be able to decide for ourselves?
Personally, I love it when people tell me they burn copies of my CDs to give their friends. Perhaps, if I were a millionaire from producing music my thoughts on this would change. Nah; I'd just have more time to write more music, which is way more fun than bickering about $$$.
Linux rocks!!! www.dedserius.com
www.dedserius.com
VB != VisualBasic
If I did a shoddy job I'd certainly see it as fair. I also think I should get a $10 check for every patch I have to download for a program.
I think that is very fair.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
With an open subscription model you can't precent evil people from getting on the system even if you squash the account. A random ascii string can be generated for a username each time. Quite effective.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Wouldn't it be a bit tougher to ban someone from gnutella since it is decentralized?
They're having a chat today specifically about the Napster shenanigans at 5pm PT (GMT -8). Show up 1/2 hour early to submit questions/comments.
As the press release says "Hold nothing back: this is Metallica, after all. They can take it."
-----
1: Will Napster REALLY have time to set up blocking for 355,000 users? I mean, I'm sure they never actually expected that they would need to do something like this and can only do it by hand. If Metallica just gave them a big printed list Napster would go broke just hiring data entry clerks to deal with it all. If other artisits/labels took this approach they might swamp Napster with user bans to the point that Napster can't cope and goes under, or refuses the bans.
.02.
Of course, Napster could require the user records in a database format so that they can just automate the process, but then they would have to hire coders and dedicate hardware to the task.
Regardless, if record companies just sent endless dumps of users known to be trading pirated tracks, this could be an easy weapon for Napster's destruction.
2: Ummmm... do the Metallica lawyers realize that even if Napster does ban the users, the users can just make new accounts? I mean, if these people are so heartless and cruel as to keep Lars from being able to afford a few more Porsches, then they must be evil enough to lie about their names, right?
Anyway, thats my
Since they started making CD's. That's why they all have a little "no reproduction" disclaimer in the packaging somewhere. It has ALWAYS been illegal to copy music from a CD to a tape and pass it around without express permission from the holder of the copyright on the album.
When you buy a CD, you don't have any liscense to the music. You just have the CD, which you happen to be able to listen to on a CD player. And that's all. Period.
This whole Metallica thing is ridiculous. Back in the realy 80's, when they actually took off, there was a whole scene based around tape trading. That's how bands became known. People traded the tapes, the band's played gigs, people turned up to the gigs, people bought tapes at the gigs etc. etc.
So their whole success is based around the fact that people "traded their art as commodities" and built their reputation up. They would not be where they are today without that.
Though why anyone would actually _want_ to listen to the more recent stuff is well beyond me...
This is true in the greater context of your arguement - however, you gave an unqualified statement that there is no such thing as an "dynamic address". This is simply not true, and I referred you to the appropriate RFC. You didn't state that "We are not interested in the host's perspective of dynamic addressing."
We want to know how some random server can tell if an address is dynamic. You can't.
Again, true.
Not to mention that the address isn't the dynamic part, it's the host that changes not the address.
Again, both change, rendering both dynamic objects. The only thing I commented on was your statement that "There is not [sic] such thing as a "dynamic address".
dynamic :Characterized by continuous change
Therefore, if the address changes from the host's perspective, it renders the address dynamic (by definition).
-jerdenn
metalica_hates_mp3
lars_needs_the_money
metalica_is_all_about_money
metalica_hates_their_fans
mp3_is_good
metalica_only_wants_the_money
metalica_sold_out
lars_is_out_of_blow_so_he_sues_thefans
metalica_sues_their_fans
listentometalica_gotojail
metalica_robs_their_fans
___
Whether that claim would stand up in court or not would be irrelevant -- it's easy enough to get a warrant for the confiscation of your computer which would then be held as evidence pending the resolution of the trial, which would last for a decade and a half, cost 12 million dollars of your own money and $30 million of the taxpayers' and which no one would even remember at the end, whether you win or lose. All you really need to do if you're a big corporation or the US Government is make an example of a few people like this and everyone else will fall into place quickly enough.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Huh? Artists will still get paid, somehow? How do you expect them to get paid? Some dumb teenagers trade MP3 files and the artists just magically get some money?
I don't see any of these people trying to stop new technology. They just don't want to be ripped off. How can anyone object to that, unless they feel entitled to get someone else's hard work for free? Frankly, Jon Katz and everyone who supports his view just piss me off whenever they say that Metallica is evil for not wanting people to steal from them. Come on people, that's just ridiculous.
Personally, I don't really care. I don't trade music via MP3. I doubt I'd find anything on other people's hard drives using Napster that I'd want to hear anyway. If I want to hear a commercial release, I'll buy the friggin' CD. I download a crapload of losslessly compressed CD-quality live concerts from bands who allow taping (which I then burn to CD), but that's all completely legal and therefore no one is interested in coming after us.
So this doesn't really affect me. But it just really upsets me to see everyone act like the artists' copyrights are worthless. Grow up.
Gumbo
1990s: Sell 'Em All
2000s: Sue 'Em All
What's next?
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
Why? Energy is plentiful in this universe. If we exhaust our current energy supplies there are others that could take their place with a bit of effort.(We could use a few problems like this anyway.)
There are plenty of other environmentalist concerns you could be worrying about. Why worry about something as trivial as how much energy is used? You should be more concerned about the way the energy is produced, regardless of who uses it for what.
You know I think A. Coward was making a joke. His post was a humorous way of saying "That's a lot of paper to be wasting".
Some people need new senses of humor.
...but now I prefer to think of the band as dead. Killed by a mishap in their own pyro effects on stage.
That pretty much sums up my feelings. I wrote (and I suggest everyone do this) my local rock station letting them know that every time I hear these knuckleheads I'm changing channels. I gave them a link to some of the recent coverage, and pointed out that this is a band that used to engourage bootlegging as a form of promotion. That band, I said will be sorely missed. As for these clowns on the radio now, I'd just as soon forget that they existed.
Allow me to refine that comment for all the pinheads out there who are just looking to be offended.
Of course, those Napster users trading in copyrighted material are stealing.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
1) What's the substantial difference between Napster and old-media cassette tape copying?
2) If the online exchange of their music is "sickening", treating their art as a commodity, how is that different from stamping out millions of copies of their work, which can be re-sold freely through used CD shops?
3) How do they envision the music industry working 10 years from now? Will Metallica be remembered as a defender of the industry or a misguided old-school band that missed out on a great opportunity?
4) Does Metallica or Electra Records have any plans in the works to offer music online? Do they have any ideas to offer the Internet Generation other than a Luddite-like prohibitionist stance?
P.S.: Of course the Napster users are stealing, but its massive popularity could well be interpreted as a great market waiting to be catered to, rather than a problem that needs to be wiped out.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Now thats a great use of american legal system. For the first time in history 335000 people will be sued by a couple of idiots. Well, some court clerk will be unhappy - writing 335000 summonses and all. I wonder if it's ok to overhear some of Metallica music while walking by someones window or something. They should really have an address to remit a quarter every time this happens to you. Would btw be nice if they woul dhave to serve their own warrants door to door: "Hi, we are metallica and we are here to serve you with a court warrant".Or may be thats how they figured they can assemble 335000 fans in one place - mandatory concert?:))) I'd personally prefer "KISS" just cuz they would look so much cooler knocking at a door of some sleepy suburb.
Now on Napster we have a diffrent scheme.Take, for example, free advertising, I bet a smaller band would give their first-born children to get 300.000 people offering their songs on napster.
There are no distribution cost, no jewel cases no pressed cd's
So what does that mean? Contrary to all the inflated costs we are likeley to hear in the coming fight it boils down to 1-5$ (the music studio has still to be paid and other variuous costs).
If I could download an album for 2$ I would gladly pay it( not for metallica though, but that's another story)
But the record industries want to maximize their income, they will never pass their savings to the customer, just because they are nice guys.
So I'm quite sure that Napster and other trading networks will help to secure customers rights.
why are they sellouts? Because they want to get paid for their work?
It is illegal. You allowed to make a copy of the media that *you* bought. The license allows that only
Standard Price for a CD:$15 -- well, where I am at (Columbus, Ohio) you can buy CD's for somwhere between $11 and $12 new from some smaller stores, where they can't afford to take a loss on the CD. They most definetly have a mark-up on it, probably somewhere in the range of 15%-25%. Taking a 20% margain, and an average price of $11.50, that makes a wholesale price of $9.50 per CD.
What the Record Company provides : They provide the cost of recording,distribution, marketing, sales, A&R, etc,etc. This is not free!
So continuing on with our example, the avearage album sells around 100,000 copies (think about this, for every huge band, there is a no name). Most "major" albums cost on the average of $200,000 to make, plus another $200,000 to market, plus videos, overhead, distribution, etc, bringing a total to around $500,000 for an album. So on the average, it cost the record company $5 per album in cost *above* producing the physical media, so adding that in, we are @$6 per CD. Add in tour support, and paying the band after they have paid of the advances, etc. You are looking at an average cost for a CD at around $6, and they sell it for $9.
Now, I know my numbers aren't exact, and averaging anyting can taint results, but my point is, is there is more to a CD then the cost of a physically making the CD. Take that into account!
---
/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
Looks like the lines are being drawn. Those who are creative enough to realize the marketing benefits of the future of Napster are ready for the new century. Those locked in the last century with all their lawyers are being exposed as merely old and in the way, like the Rolling Stones. Yup, kiddies, strip away all that irony-laden pomp and circumstance of a big old nasty metal band that you think "understands" you and what do you find? Just a big old nasty metal band with no sense of irony willing to wring your scrawny little neck while they have their nervous breakdown wondering if they're losing any of your money. They may as well just kiss their concert receipts goodbye. Or else just start touring with John Rocker. ;-) Obviously we've seen the last of the two-year, seven continent world tours which end up being virtual industries ala the Stones and U2. The genie's been let out of the bottle and there's no going back now. At the end of the day you have to remember that the Internet is really just a new means of distribution. We're going from broadcast to narrowcast. Those creative enough to think through how to take advantage of this new method of distribution will "win" and those who want to hang on to the 20th century way of doing things are going to be dinosaurs faster than you can say Foghat.
My name is Carlos Montoya. You share files of my music. Prepare to die.
This is from CNET's article:
"I don't know if it's going to put a chill on the user end," said Howard King, the Los Angeles attorney who represents Metallica...
This is a message my brother (big Metallica fan) left for me:
Hey Jon check this shit out!!!! If Butthole-tallica get me banned from Napster I'll burn my fucking Justice CD!!!!
Yeah sure,
but how do they know that the guys trading the
MP3's don't actually own the CD with the tracks
on it?
I have a cable connection here, and I prefer
downloading the MP3's I wanna play on my
computer, iso ripping them myself. So what,
that's my right... sue me.
Extra problem:
If I name my "FreeSong" by "Free Cool band"
Unforgiven_Metallica.mp3. How will they know?
What if I do it the other way round?
I hope they have a lot of bandwith to bit-match
every file that goes through napster.
Fuck Metallica
Fuck them big time
J.
>Actually, no it's not your "right."
>U.S. law only allows you to make your own copies of your own albums for your own personal use and archival purposes. It is not your right to redistribute those copies to other people or
>take someone else's copies just because you also own an original. The law's pretty specific in that respect.
under U.S. law... maybe, but I don't see anyone suing me over this in Belgium.
Please remember that US-law is not universal, global law (even if you'd want
it to be so ). And if they do sue, well, heck I don't give a damn...
A few of my lawyer friends are more then willing to help me out for free
(they owe me one becaused I helped them out once), and I doubt they have
a very strong case against me. Go prove I didn't download those MP3 by
mistake (I of course immediatly deleted them), and those MP3's that are on my
hard-disk weren't ripped by me.
I'm sure your laws are pretty specific... and I don't care. There I said it.
Now moderate me down, and flame me all you like...
na na na na nah
J.
PS: We can't buy guns easily over here ("Europeans have no freedom"),
but we can walk down the street drinking a can of beer...
Now tell me what's more important to you
[don't respond in this thread please, just mail me]
Many individuals using the software or rival products believed they were operating anonymously Surely by now everyone has clued in to the very lack of real anonymity that exists on the Internet?
or that individual actions would go unnoticed among the massive quantity of files being traded at any given time.
So were they expecting that they could use the system for music they don't have a right to listen to?? Really very silly- we can certainly expect that once Napster bans the users listed by Metallica, that ALL members of RIAA will demand the same. And while Metallica may say now that no lawsuits are pending against those people (on the list)- I wouldn't trust them (their lawyers?) as far as I can throw them to NOT begin legal precending against a few; just to make their point.
Yeah, that's a great idea, but now that the whole thing's started it's probably too late for Metallica to back down and admit that Napster is a good idea for them. Plus, their record company/management certainly won't want to do this - they've got a lot more tied up in it than the band itself.
I can see how this would mollify the bands themselves if it happened enough times, but for the people behind the bands it's less about the money and more about control over distribution. Even if Napster was a sure-fire way to make money (which unfortunately it's not) they would still want to crush it or control it, whichever was better for them. Sad, but true.
Metallica has basically spit in the face of nearly half a million fans. Personally, I'm not a big fan, but if I was, I would be incensed that Metallica has chosen to treat their fans this way. Diplomacy is obviously not one of Metallica's strong suits. Not that it matter; their music has been going downhill for years.
I've downloaded many Metallica tracks through napster. I also happen to own every Metallica album (I'm not buying any more however.). It's easier to use napster than rip the tracks from a CD - just as it's easier for me to rip my own albums from my.mp3.com.
--
-- SIGFPE
What would happen if people started posting MP3s all over the place that were legal mp3's, but were named something like "Metalica_EnterTheSandman.mp3"? Do they have a copyright or something on the name, and could force you to remove it based on that, or is it strictly content based. Because it becomes a much greater pain in the ass to go after people if you need to actually listen to each and every mp3 to verify that they are indeed infringing.
-Spazimodo
Fsck the millennium, we want it now.
Fsck the millennium, we want it now.
Millennium Crisis Line: 0890 900 2000 [calls cost 50p/min]
"They make their money off of their music."
A bunch of people in the southern US used to make mad cash of of slavery. We of the north went down, kicked some ass, and requested that they stop using slaves. They consiquently lost slaves as a mode of income. (I know it wasn't that quick or simple, but that was the eventual result.)
Just because you're doing something now that makes you money doesn't mean we as a society have a responsibility to ensure you can keep doing it to make money once it becomes uneconomic. And this is clearly about economics not art.
"Property is theft. Property is liberty. Property is impossible.
-Spazimodo
Fsck the millennium, we want it now.
Fsck the millennium, we want it now.
Millennium Crisis Line: 0890 900 2000 [calls cost 50p/min]
Metallica died when Cliff did.
-Legion
They will not stop .mp3 and Napster and related from being the format of the future. They are only showing themselves to be the biggest whiners while everyone else is trying to figure out how to embrace this new technology.
"We can't have Metallica cutting into those profits. We're suing them on the grounds that their actions will reduce the popularity of their music and may even make it more difficult to distribute Metallia MP3's, which in turn would drastically cut into our Metallica profits from new listeners. Let's face it, Metallica hasn't made a great album in quite a while, so the only money we get out of them lately is people listening to their OLD stuff and deciding to buy it."
Also at issue in the suit are about a dozen songs released by Metallica that, according to the RIAA's legal team, "really suck." These include "Whiskey in the Jar" among others.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Its nice to see that metallica really appreciates their fans.
There is a concert up in Dallas in a few weeks - several bands, including Metallica, are playing. I really wanted to go - I like some of the other headliners. But I will be damned before I let one penny of my money go to support Metallica ever again...
As for anyone who is still making Metallica available through Napster - removed the MP3's. Don't distribute their music. Not because they
are suing, but because they have proven themselves to be unworthy of their fans.
Just my 2 cents...
Check out Magic Firesheep!
Now wait just a cotton-pickin' minute here.
These 335,435 users were supposedly all busted in one weekend. Can someone with Napster confirm with a search that there are typically on the order of a quarter million Napster users online and offering Metallica songs on any given day? The numbers I've heard...how shall I say...do not seem wholly compatible with this.
But this enormous number does provide lots o' good publicity for the RIAA ("See what we're up against? HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of music pirate every day!!!"), as well as producing an enormous administrative headache for Napster. Perhaps enough of one to put them out of business.
I smell a rat.
That sounds fair. If they did indeed trade Metallica music (and it's not hard to get a list of people who do), then this seems pretty fair, not to mention official Napster policy. No money, no greed, just prevent illegal trading.
when Metallica _liked_ the fact that thier music was bootlegged, copied, and passed around?
I do. Unfortunately, Metallica doesn't seem to.
Whatever. I haven't particularly enjoyed anything of theirs since the Black album, and that was a stretch.
I wonder what Cliff Burton would say.
M
Sure, I have a thankless job. That's okay. I have a lot of (non
Recently, it has come to our attention that you have been illegally trading certain digital representations of the music belonging to our client, Metallica. First, our position on the matter has always been clear: The Thing That Should Not Be. Your actions have put our clients in dire financial straights. According to Frank Metallica, "they're Bleeding Me dry". This is Sad But True. Our clients preferred recourse is apparently to Kill Em All, but in a less drug-induced stated they have relented to allow Merciful Fate in our dealings with offenders such as your self.
In a Blitzkrieg investigation of the records obtained from Napster (herein known as Phantom Lord), we have clear indication that you were engage in this illegal activity. You may have tried to cover your tracks, but The Memory Remains. After a long Struggle Within, we have decided that while you will remain Unforgiven, we shall not Seek and Destroy Overkill.
You are hereby banned from using Napster until further notified. You should consider your Napster logon Stone Dead Forever and realize any actions on your part should be considered Too Late Too Late.
We seek only to protect the financial security belonging to Metallica - Nothing Else Matters
Sincerely, FUD ( Master of Puppets)
XML causes global warming.
It seems silly, but it's not legal to download an mp3 EVEN IF you own the CD ... that's the way the law works (the DMCA). The only legal mp3's are ones that the band has given away the expressed copyright right of free distribution ... perhaps not the way it should be, but that's the way it is.
Then I don't see the point.
People can just download and share until they get banned, and then what? Well, they are left with not being able to do something they weren't supposed to be doing in the first place.
Even if they ban IP's, people can just stay with napster until they get banned, then jump on to gnutella until they get banned, then the next thing, etc, etc
It's going to take something more than banning users to have any impact on Metallica's (or anyone else's) music sales.
--
I just gave gnutella as an example of something people could move on to.
My post implied that people would get banned from gnutella, but I don't know if that would ever happen or not.
Just giving an example.
--
According to the RIAA, you have still violated the Audio Home Recording Act. According to United States Code, Title 17 - Copyrights, they might be right. The EFF says otherwise, but Sec. 107 does not specifically identify home copies as fair use.
As near as I can tell, fair use for home users has not been defined by current law. For more information try the Stanford University Library Copyright and Fair Use Site.
IANAL. My advice is that you hire one if you intend to take on Lars Ulrich.
To download Napster and go get me a Metallica song just before I crawled into bed, and let it sit visible to the universe on my mp3 share directory so the corpos could try and nail me overnight.
I slept like a baby, yes I did. And I will tonight when I run Napster again and go hunt me a Dr. Dre song. I'll sleep like a baby until this lame brained attack is smacked down like the redheaded stepchild of brainchilds that it is.
Then I'll probably cry like a baby because I can't help taunt and torment these suicidally crazy people who think they can take out a swarm of locusts with a
========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
This is a pretty stupid--and pointless--thing for Metallica to do. So what if they actually get their ban? It's called a new account. All these people will have to do is create new accounts and Metallica's efforts go to waste. Even if they ban using IPs, a lot of Napster users are in college, and run their computers on high speed networks with dynamically configured IP addresses. All a user has to do is get a new IP. Maybe Metallica should try something a little more productive with their time instead of selling out and proving that they're only recording music to make money.
Trolls make great pets. Adopt one today!
Does anybody else think that maybe Napster should have built in some kind of encryption or scrambling, so that something like this can't happen so easily?
I would just stop using Napster and go with something less centralized and a little more secure.
The enquiry lasted quite a long time as I recall but wan't covered heavily in the news (probably largely because those running TV and those running the music industry are largely from the same cartel) so we didn't get to hear much of the details (like for example which of the MMC's relatives was a high-up in the music industry)
Rich
Do you honestly expect me to believe you never copied a song off the radio or taped a film off TV, (Im not sure about the legality of this now, but it definitely used ot be illegal). Just because something is law, doesnt make it right. Laws change. What is happening here is the people who made money out of old technology are trying to hold back the tide and stop new technology being used to full advantage. The fact that the law has to be changed to allow this is irrelevant. Artists will still get paid, somehow. Maybe the pay will be distributed a little more fairly than before is all.
What I suggested was basically a tit-for-tat thing on what is really an unrelated issue. I dont think that the price of music is a big issue in why people download mp3s. A racketeering charge aims closer to what irritates me so much about what the RIAA are trying.
So, has anyone tried a suit against the record industry, (or some random represantative of them) accusing them of price fixing?
Just because i don't listen to commercial radio to hear new music, doesn't make me evil.
-------
-------
"don't smoke, don't drink, don't fuck
at least i can fucking think"
Minor Threat
You say that killing trees will do almost nothing. This makes you rather ignorant. If you want to live life wearing an oxygen mask, go ahead, lumber those trees. Not only will Carbon Monoxide (a gas which humans don't take too well to) increase, but oxygen will decrease. To enlighten your ignorance, this is due to the fact that trees breath carbon monoxide and expel oxygen. Without trees and forage, humans are as good as extinct.
Maybe you do have a reason when you say "Trees have no rights they don't think", because obviously you don't think about what you post. By your own words, you should have no rights.
c0rarc
Just to put an idea on things, did you know that America uses 1/4 of the worlds energy? That is incredible, and Americans should be ashamed of themselves.
c0rarc
As if you needed any more proof that the Metallica events of the last week revealed a band full of old guys, out of touch with new technology and in the last days of a failing career, the Band is now doing a VH1 Special.
Come on! I don't see how Metallica can actually prove that these users deserve to be banned.
I for one, trade metallica songs frequently over napster. At last check i had 140 different Metallica songs on mp3 (read: over 700 MB).
But you know what? Every single one of those songs were obtained legally since I own every Metallica album and several European imports (which if the RIAA gets their way with the DMCA would probably be rendered illegal as well).
But since I own the CD that all of my metallica mp3s came from (hell I ripped 'em myself) I'm completely blameless.
I'm assuming that everyone who I share files with is also complying with this law and also have the albums before they get the mp3.
But simply trading an mp3 over napster does NOT immdediately imply guilt, that is, unless you believe the RIAA's schlock about *all* digital copying onto your computer as being illegal.
*sigh*
The kicker to all of this is the fact that CD sales went up 20% last year! If Napster was *that* big of a threat, don't you think that number wouldn't be so high?
Come on, Tinkler, Tink!!
how on earth is the parent post in any way a "troll"? it's just an expression of opinion. it may not be what you agree with, but if all you wanted to hear were opinions you agreed with, why would you even bother coming to an open forum? you could just talk to yourself. the modding down of the above post is, i'm afraid, representative of the horribly misguided moderation of late. namely, "I'll mod anything down I don't agree with or that the general slashdot community wouldn't agree with." If you feel the need, mod me down as offtopic, but please, mod the above post up.
sorry, but you can't copy any music in any digital format..only analog..you can copy to tape, and the one exception to the digital rule is that you can use a CDR which is intended for audio copying only..but you can't use a PC CDR nor can you make mp3 copies..sorry, that's just the law..
Halls of Justice painted green, Money talking
Oh My GOD! Metallica is the biggest bunch of MORONS I have ever EVER heard of in my life!!! If they really found over 300thousand people on Napster (which is ridiculous, there are only a few thousand people there, and I don't think that many people care for Metallica) they have got a proof of huge market they have over the Internet. They have to exploit the market not destroy it! Right now if they block all these people from Napster everyone will move to Gnutella and FreeNet at that point Metallica can kiss goodbye this opportunity to market to a third of a million customers.
Again, they should create market by investing into development of micropayments over the web and sell directly to customers who want to listen to their music and to sell only the music that customers want at very small prices 10c-$1 for a license for a song and everyone will be happy!
Loosers.
You can't handle the truth.
Poor, poor Metallica. Napster can't really ban the users, so you get banned under one name, use another. So your IP gets banned, well if you are ADSL you don't give a shit. Just reconnect and you have a new IP. So your domain got busted, oh, well, what do you have your work connection for? School connection? Gnutella, FreeNet, HotLine, Free networks? Anyhow, good luck Metallica!
You can't handle the truth.
Napster would ban users via their ID, email address and IP address. Creating a new ID/email address is trivial. As for the IP address, I just fired up Napster. Go to File => Preferences.
Just above the OK and CANCEL buttons is an area for firewall settings and a space for a proxy server and address.
Any banned user can easily get back onto Napster.
Everyone should be using a proxy server to protect their identities.
"I'm The Bounty Bear. I will find him anywhere. I'm searching."
For a start, someone is bound to make some sort of encyption for it, then they won't know what they're sniffing.
The other thing... what if everyone decides to protest by putting "metallica" on the end of every file.. And napster bans you.. Wouldn't it be possable to sue metallica for causeing you to get banned by napster becasue they wrongly accused you of pirating music?
I read somewhere that napster isn't breaking the law if they show evidence of "trying" to remove people with illegal material. Given that napster usernames can be created very easilly, a mass ban just may help napster in the RIAA suit. The people who get banned shouldn't have much of a problem creating a new user. Metallica may have opened the door for napster!
Today is the closing of a parenthesis opened before this sig, before this story, before this existence that is me (as if
Metallica: there's no surer sign that they've sold out. But you know, there are a lot of good bands for free on MP3.com who are happy to have you listen to their music. And they'll sell you a CD for $6.99. And a lot of the music there is damned good. These guys are just afraid people will find out that they don't have to pay $16.99 for a CD or $80 for a concert ticket to hear good music. Much less what Metallica has been pushing lately.
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
Which isn't really too hard, considering that's none.
--
These aren't the droids you're looking for.
Oh wow.
Napster users who broke the law and now have to pay for it.
Don't get your hopes up buddy. You think that Metallica and their controllers believe in law and order? Seriously now, everyone complains about Katz, but "corporatism" is real. They don't care about law and order, they care about profit. Do you honestly think they're going to put 300,000 music fans on trial? Unlikely. They may put that guy offering every Metallica album on trial, but even there its close. They have a profit agenda, and they aren't going to risk it for "law and order."
some of us are actually in favor of law and order
An unthinking "law and order," without establishing the values you wish to enforce is dangerous and potentially evil. I don't think that the people of Slashdot oppose Law and Order. They promote Democracy, and they promote a well-reasoned law and order.
I have no sympathy for the subhuman zealots who think that they have a right to everything for free because they once installed a copy of Red Hat.
Where do you get the impression that open source advocates think that they "have a right" to everything for free? They don't want everything for free, they just see the potential in creating a system where people contribute and create a system that's better for everyone. Personally, I think the predominant idea is that if it isn't open and free, it's philosophically sub-par and deserves to be ignored.
That the Open Source Movement seemingly supports these hardened criminals is ludicrous.
:) Valium time man... Okay, let's just point out the couple of really poor thoughts in this statement. 1.) Where do you get the idea that open-sourcers support Napster? From the fact that some people on Slashdot think that Metallica and the Recording Industry are greedy? Come off it, they are greedy. I haven't seen anyone say that we have a "right" as you said, to get Metallica songs for free. People are angry because Metallica is showing their true, greedy, colors. As RMS said yesterday, Napster isn't free software, and it's not open source. You are confused. 2.) Napster users are hardened criminals? Are you insane? Napster users listen to music. Most of them don't even keep the music afterwards. Many of them go out and buy the albums afterwards. What they are doing may be illegal, but they are not hardened criminals.
No wonder no one takes you seriously
I wonder who the "no one" is that you are referring to. I mean, Douglas Adams is doing an interview with Slashdot, and practically every important online Journal refers to Slashdot as a mouthpiece for the technically literate.
Most Open Source Advocates have never produced any art or IP contributions
That's probably true. I myself am not a programmer, though maybe I'll start to learn a thing or two... But there are tons of people, over on mp3.com for example, who are producing work that everyone can listen to for free. The fact that a majority of open source advocates aren't producers doesn't mean that the movement isn't valid. And hey, a larger audience of users can only help those who do produce. And the more active that audience is to promote open-source, the better of the producers will be.
so how can you be expected to understand the issues?
Do you have to be a Senator to understand how government works?
You commonly accuse the media of being biased, but consider yourselves free from prejudice.
Where are you getting this from? Seriously, have you EVER seen an open-source advocate who claim to be unbiased against greedy corporations and unfair use restrictions?
Free Software does not mean Free Music.
never produced any art or IP
Well, your second statement there shows you can't be so ignorant as to believe that open source only has software implications, so your first statement there is essentially meaningless.
Look, its people like you who really endanger the system. You imply that people who support open source are zealots, yet you unthinkingly support a system that favors the rich and the greedy. You claim to be taking a position for "law and order," by opposing Napster. But by opposing the open discussion of the system Napster exists in, you are actually criticizing the very core value of our system, the democratic process. Law and order without democratic thought and the opportunity for reform is nothing short of fascism.
OoO
OoO
Please do not publish outside of
Gee, if I just spout venom, can I get modded up too?
Look, you are quite right that everyone ought to sit down and think about this... but you say that Napster has technically broken the law. How is that? As people have said, over and over and over, the analogy ought to be an ISP. If Napster refuses to ban those 300 thousand plus users, than maybe they have technically broken the law...
Anyway, you are right that people ought to have the right to control their IP. I think that people here just think that the right thing to do is to contribute one's own IP so th other "hard-working artists" can benefit.
Anyway, I don't see how you can think that Metallica is being generous... They are protecting their profits in the best way that they can. Could you imagine the kind of backlash if they sued 300 thousand fans?
OoO
OoO
Please do not publish outside of
As for current users of Napster, they have to consider :
A) Are they in the list?
B) If not, will they get on the list?
C) Either way, will they end up in the lawsuit?
I remember a few years ago, a man on the highway had a briefcase with a lot of money in it, which broke, sending money everywhere. Motorists stopped, and gathered the money, not all returning it to the owner. The police said that they had videotape of people taking off with the money, and if it wasn't returned by X date, they would be prosecuted. Who knows whether they had the tape of not, it pretty much worked..
If Metallica would take back these CD's and refund my money, I would gladly buy new CD's from them without downloading any of it first. Until then, Napster is my "Is this one shit too?" filter. I sure hope this makes sense.
Right Now, our government is doing things you think only other governments do.
After all, we wouldn't want to ban an honest user, now would we? ;)
----(o)----
Is your average 13 year old with a cable modem going to pay $15 to listen to a few metallica songs? No, he is going to download them in seconds instead of asking mom to drive him to the mall.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Why not try changing the laws instead of finding more ways to break them? Both sides will be happy in the long run. "what they found a way around this copyright law? well lets write another" see my point? I tried gnutella and it needs a hell of a lot of refinement. First show ping times and such like napster, and make a real connection speed indicator. I'm tired of downloading at 400bytes/sec from some guy on aol with a 14.4 modem.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Actually, I can see Metallica's point in this case. They make their money off of their music. I know, someone will argue that sales are up since Napster but what is being traded over Napster is still illegal and it's their right to try to stop it. I really don't think kicking people off of Napster or suing them is the best way of going about doing it, but I realize that they do need to find a way to protect their music.
Anyone have a better suggestion on how to stop piracy without making so many lawyers rich?
kwsNI
How can they ban that many users when they do not own the software?
The only way I would of thought they could do it is include blacklist capabilities...
How do they combat people changing nicks?
Hmmm, seems pretty impossible to me
I agree with you though that 335,000 users is a ridiculous claim. They could only have discovered who was sharing Metallica music, not who has downloaded it, and I severely doubt that so many users would be sharing it. Can you say 'cry for attention'?
I guess these 335,435 Napster users truly are...
The Unforgiven.
love,
br4dh4x0r
Signed up with Napster using my real name/e-mail. Downloaded every bit of music I own, and not one bit more. I didn't even down load stuff I'd bought then had stolen. Only stuff I can put my hands on. Now, sue me Lars. Come on, take your best shot. Soon as you file, I'll be after that huge pile of cash you call your wallet.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Actually, owning the CD is quite the personal defense. What mp3.com did wrong was to build a database of mp3s, not for providing the mp3s to people that owned the CDs.
Did you say you wanted that? Probably not. But are you part of the "slashdot community"? By your own criteria, most probably.
But go ahead, make another login name, go bitch about how you're not a white linux-using male, then troll about how hypocritical the slashdot community is, because some of its members have different views from the others.
Free Software != Free Music, of course. However, what you don't seem to have noticed is that the two practices share a lot of the same philosophy. Supporters of open source feel that the movement will help content producers and users both, and will result in better software for everyone. Likewise, supporters of freely distributable music do not feel it will lead to an anarchistic state where good music is no longer worth producing; they do not even think that pirating Metallica songs will hurt Metallica.
"But how could this be?" Have you ever bought concert tickets? How about band merchandise? Or even purchased a CD even though you already had the one or two singles off the album? My guess is yes. And do you realize that most bands do not make most of their money off of CD sales (the giant recording industry takes most of it), but rather by touring? Don't you think freely distributable music could increase concert ticket and merchandise sales? Of course!
Finally, I take issue with your stipulation that just because something is a law, people should be made to pay for breaking it. First of all, the idea that a content seller has nothing to do with piracy of its products was, in fact, even attacked by Judge Jackson, who mentioned that piracy of Microsoft products would not be so widespread if their prices were more reasonable. Interesting-- piracy as a market regulating mechanism? It's true-- Napster use would be much lower if people could log on to e-Music and actually find the songs they wanted to hear at a reasonable price, instead of its current paltry selection (thanks to the recording industry's refusal to grant rights at a reasonable price, of course). Second, people break many laws on a widespread basis all the time. Traffic laws, for instance-- there would be a huge outcry if everyone who went 1mph over the speed limit was thrown in jail; in fact, they don't even ticket people until they're more than significantly over the limit! There are also laws against cohabitation, most sexual practices (oral sex, sodomy, etc.), and so on and so forth-- we break those all the time. Yes, these laws should be repealed, and so on and so forth, but the second people start changing their behavior to perfectly fit the laws, we will be an utterly submissive society. I think you need to rethink your die hard law and order stance a bit.
New Metallica: "Grr! Napster! No electronic distrubution of our music!"
Old Metallica:
"Do you see what I see?
Truth is an offence
You silence for your confidence
Do you hear what I hear?
Doors are slamming shut
Limit your imagination,
Keep you where they must
Do you feel what I feel?
Bittering distress
Who decides what you express?
Do you take what I take?
Endurance is the word
Moving back instead of forward seems to me absurd."
New Metallica: "Let's exploit the legal system by burying people who can't afford it in endless lawsuits!"
Old Metallica:
"Lady justice has been raped
Truth assassin
Rolls of red tape seal your lips
Now you're done in."
New Metallica: "Hey, where'd you get those copyrighted lyrics? Thief!"
Several music groups already publish mp3s on their cds - Cherry Poppin Daddies leap to mind. So, while you're swearing up and down how you'll never support metallica again, why not skip on down to the store and buy a little CPD?
Judge Pag, the Learned, Impartial, and Very Relaxed
I'd bet that the chat site gets slashdotted, then they start screaming DoS! DoS! Those mean Napster users sabatoged our site so we can't play dumb in public! Sue them! Sue them! They're out to get us!
How am I supposed to hallucinate with all these swirling colors distracting me?
This tactic totally pisses me off! What gives them the right to "police" Napster to determine who is trading what?
Locally, there are a few strip clubs under the same assault -- by church organizations. They sit outside of the strip club and gather the license plate numbers of people who frequent the establishment and film them with video cameras. They say that they are tracking the habits of the "offenders." Does the fact that they cannot win their case in a court of law give them permission to take law into their own hands?
I digress: Metallica shouldn't be attacking the very people who listen to their music; ie: bite the hand that feeds! Instead, they should just continue with their lawsuit against Napster and leave the end-user alone. It isn't up to their lawyers to pass judgement before judgement is due!
--
dc
--
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
They don't need to prove that each individual file is a copy of one of their songs. They are just going to tell Napster to get rid of these people. Napster in the past has appeared happy to do this, and they will probably do it again to ward off a lawsuit. However, I agree that this will do very little long-term good. As a former Metallica fan I do at least appreciate the appearence of an effort on their part. I see "protecting" their music as a legitimate venture, but bringing down all of Napster because a few people are getting their songs is unreasonable.
Here's one: How can Napster, or WebPD tell if a person is legitimately downloading a metallica song they already own the cd too, or violating copyright? They aren't going to go to each house of the 335,000 and ask to see their CD collections...
"Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder"
You guys are missing the point. Metallica isn't going to sue every user. They probably realize people can just get a new login.
.MP3 if you own the CD.
But what they have proved is that Napster is basically designed to enable piracy. This wasn't some sneak attack out of nowhere.
There's been enough press lately that a majority of the people grabbing Metallica stuff realized that Metallica didn't want them doing it and considered it illegal. But that didn't stop anyone from grabbing songs.
My big problem with Napster is that I don't see what's so hard about making your own
- My password is slashdot
I think it's becoming quite apparent that central-server models like Napster just don't work for subversive technologies -- they're too easy for the government (and the lawyers) to target. A lot of people are switching to Gnutella, which is completely decentralized (think of an IRC net where everybody runs their own server).
But contemplate this: if Napster dies and Gnutella flourishes, the RIAA can hire a crack team of hackers (or would that be a hack team of crackers?) to launch skillful DoS attacks on the Gnutella network. It could be something as simple as putting fake listings on a thousand servers connected to the network -- make "Metallica -- Until It Sleeps.mp3" a radio advertisement for the album that the song is on.
Here's the kicker: with no centralized authority who can claim to "own" the network, devious mislistings like this aren't a denial of service attack. The RIAA believes that it is using the network for the right thing: disseminating advertising. If they flood the network with enough copies of this 'advertisement', you'll never be able to find Metallica songs because 99% of the hits won't be songs.
As in CMOT Cut My Own Throat Dibbler ?.
The greateest distributor of the art that is "music with rocks in" (according to Terry Pratchet anyway)
CMOT dibbler never cared about the fans, but he knew how to market music. Well music with rocks in anyway. I think CMOT would have disagreed going after fans IS the way to stay on the sales chart
When have you ever heard of music corporations caring about'the fans' anyway ?.
Why do people still pay a premium for cd's when they cost less to produce than older formats?.
The answer is that trampling on the fans has never stopped the rise of music sales in the past. If music lovers were not prepared to be ripped off by faceless corporations, why then does ticketmaster still exist with a monopoly on music events ?.
You may sensibly copy MP3's of the net, but there are still enough 'consumers' out their that will pay for the convenience of a having a shiny new cd in their hands and who don't even know what MP3 is.
let's see.. 335,435 pissed off consumers who hate metallica at $30.00 each for the say, next 2 records that metallica releases that they won't buy..works out to about 10 mil and change..plus all the bad publicity.. geniuses, i swear. -mm-
-sneakyian, President, Lamer Euthanization Services, Inc. "Putting you out of our misery since 1973"
Lars needs to shut his mouth about their 'art'. Metallica hasn't created anything even close to art in 10 years. This is what happens when pop musicians hit their decline and aren't making as much money off their record sales anymore. They need to break up and come back in another 10 years to make some money when their music is being regurgitated as retro.
Metallica can byte the big one,having taken steps that will,in time,cut them off from their fan base.Folks like myself,who have made custom tapes for personal use,can find MP3 files in thousands of sites,including those outside the U.S. Bitch all you want,but the genie has escape and nothing will ever be the same again. After this,I hope Metallica never sells even 1 new CD.Going after fans is not the way to stay on the sales charts.
Geek Hillbilly
Copyright law provides for the right to make an archival copy,if you own a purchased record/tape/CD..ect.After having my car broken into,I never carry master copies.(Just lose the recorded copies.Cheap.) If these take the form of MP3 files,so what? The copyright laws do need an overhaul,in the worst way.(By the way,this makes a case for not using your real name/email/address..ect.) As for Metallica,KISS MY BIG RED HAIRED ASS!
Geek Hillbilly
It doesn't matter whether or not you own the CD.
Look at the myMP3.com lawsuit, they were sued succesfully for providing MP3's to people that owned the CD. So, I don't see how this is any different.
Great, so now they're blocking legit Metallica MP3 trials. (must be deleted after 24 hours)
That's a myth. You are not allowed to download something illegal as long as you delete it. Its no more true than the drug dealer myth "If you ask a cop if he's a cop, he can't lie." The DMCA, along with other laws, probably, says that it's illegal to download a digital copy of a file in a way that it was not intended to be distributed. This includes if you own the original version.
not saying I agree or disagree with the laws... just pointing it out.
josh sisk
I'm so disappointed in this band now. I had thought that the controversy involving the universities would have been the end of this.
They're just alienating their fans now whether they realize it or not. (I can say that because I used to be one of them... pre-Black Album anyways).
Although I'm really starting to wonder who's driving this. Is it really the band or their label? Lately they seem to have become a big cash cow for Elektra and you have to wonder.
The chat for tomorrow will probably be interesting (read: scorching). I think I'll decline to attend though.
Someone wrote: "I hope open source succeeds and you never get to make a penny of software and you either starve, or you get a crappy minimum wage job at Burger King to pay for your computer hobby (suddenly coding becomes art and now you're not allowed to charge for your computer skills)."
;-)
WHO ever said anybody would be FORCED to write code for free? OPEN SOURCE came from the Free Software Movement, and the FSM is about FREEDOM!
Get it straight: If you write software, and wish to charge for it, go ahead! If you wish to share it with others, to get feedback, or help, or because you WANT TO, watch out: for if you used proprietary tools to make your code, you may not be ALLOWED to share it! THAT IS THE ISSUE! That is why this all started.
If you wish to use Microsoft products: go ahead! Nobody will stop you (they might jeer at you, but so what?
If you wish to WORK FOR MICROSOFT, and write code for Microsoft, go ahead! They are still around, last I checked (though at this point M$ might be a "plurality"...)
It is up to you. Do what you want. The word is "Freedom".
--
And as far as Metallica is concerned, well, see what you get for being a "fan" of that band? What a wonderful reward! You could have ALL THEIR ALBUMS, but try to download a few MP3's to listen to on your new MP3 device, and whoa! suddenly you're the band's new enemy! I don't think I could name even one song by them, for I've never heard (knowingly) anything by them. Yet all of a sudden, I don't WANT to hear anything they've done!
As far as I understand it copyright and trademark law is very specific regarding spelling/case/punctuation. We used to get shouted at at DEC for spelling ALL-IN-1, allin1, and so on. Not that I give a flying fig about Metallica, though they do seem to be behaving rather childishly (after all who wasnt got a bunch of ripped audio tapes somewhere)... ... But they prorbably havent registered the name Unforgiven.mp3 anywhere.... So all those suggesting putting easter eggs around on Napster, really couldnt be told to change them... Or am I missing something ? Cheers, Winton
So, what legitimate use is napster? please someone show me ONE legitimate napster server/user.
Well, if you weren't such a moron you might have done a little simple detective work and proven to yourself that there are thousands of users out there using Napster for perfectly legitimate and entirely legal purposes. Try running a search for any of the following: Grateful Dead, Dave Mathews Band (or DMB), Martin Madeski and Wood, Widespread Panic, Phish, Dylan, Paul Simon...etc
All of the aforementioned bands allow their fans to trade recordings of their live concerts providing there is no profit in the transaction. So go ahead and prove it yourself, run one of the above mentioned searches and you will find people engaged in perfectly legal and band/artist endorsed activities.
>Environmentalists and their sympathisers blind themselves to the facts too often in the pursuit of saving cute and cudly animals
:-)
Yeah, and feminists are mostly hairy-legged man-haters.
It might save some thought and make you feel more self-rightious to uncritically equate the fringe that is outrageous enough to make the news with the _actual_ movement, but this would reflect very poorly on your judgement or intellect, so I'll hope against all evidence that this is not what is happening
You wouldn't believe the amount of effort that enviromentalists put into overcoming the public reluctance to care about anything that _isn't_ cute and cuddly. It's mostly the non-enviromentalist public that makes saving cute and cuddly animals into a big deal, and unfortunately, it's often the only publicity conservation can get. No-one cares about desperately trying to save some bug or frog or prickly shrub that is the keystone species of an entire ecosystem, except the environmentalists. But it'll never make the news (no cutesy appeal) so people are left with the idiotic assumption that environmentalists are only interested in cuddly animals, when the media and general public should stand accused.
Among conservation circles, there is even a term for it. I forget it, but it's something like "LFM syndrome" Where LFM (not the real term) means something like "Large Furry Mammal". If a threatened ecosystem doesn't have one, good luck trying to save it - the public won't care, and that means you'll probably end up carrying the burden alone. And since the media don't care, the public will never know of the magnitude of sacrifice, and write you off as another loonie band-wagon tree-hugger.
>The moderation system is just a system like any other very similar to political patronage. All I have to do my friend is just state the party line and I get massive rewards.
Or in fact like any other community in existance. What do you think is going on when everyone complains about the gs prices or how horrible columbine is. Calling slashdot similar to political patronage, while true to a limited extent, is a bit melodramatic.
Every cohesive social group, be it slashdot or your suburb, is held together by certain shared opinions. Naturally, especially when these are minority opinions, people feel good when their belifs are affirmed and hence affirming these belifs is socially encouraged.
These are simple facts about people. So while you might be surprised by the fact that slashdoters are human otherwise this is to be expected.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
If they go ahead and publicly release a list like this, and it turns out they have been sloppy and falsely identified people as copyright infringers, they may just open themselves up for a number of massive defamation suits by people they have falsely identified and libelled. Further, if they're supplying Napster with a *paper* list of something that should be delivered as a flat database on electronic media, Napster may be able to ignore their request based on the deliberately burdensome manner it was delivered in. Obviously any such list was machine-generated and should be delivered that way, and delivering it on paper (60,000 pages of documents) is just bogus.
If I asked my friend in El Paso, TX make a copy of "Master of Puppets" and send it to me... Could Metallica sue the post office?
I've read several posts that say it cost between $0.50 and $1.00 per cd to make a cd. This has got to be just the cost of cd production. What about the actual production costs: studio time? producer? art and jacket layout? advertising? shipping? tour? Record companies also give out advances. How many cd's have to be sold to break even? (that is without air play)
Speaking of Metal bands... a online music zine I'm making will have its first issue on bands like Dio, Dokken, and Sebastian Bach... if you'd like to check it out, see http://www.ontrackmagazine.com/. It really makes me sad to see how Metallica is being nowadays. It's not like rock stars make money off of CD royalties anyways (compared to endorsements, other merchandise, touring, etc.)
-----------------------------------------
Taking this further, I don't believe offering files for upload is a copyright violation in itself. Isn't it all perfectly legal until an *actual* upload takes place?
Another issue to consider is that none of the MP3s above that I don't upload anyway, are in violation of copyright. I own every single album that Metallica has released here in Australia, and everything in there is just encoded off of my own CD collection.
Oh, and The Metallica Shrine is down for the moment, but it would have been a juicy link - it was a site that published MP3s of bootleg Metallica concerts. I went there to grab MP3s of the Perth gig (which I paid money to go see, fyi) and discovered that metallica's lawyers had gone shut it down.
If you own a Metallica album, and you use napster to download a metallica song on that album (say you never figured out how to convert to MP3)then you're doing nothing illegal. Now metallica has napster ban you for pirating music, but you haven't. I think the only logical move is to sue Metallica for having you banned. Anyone for Class Action?
Now, to keep Napster up and demonstrate their word, they may have to stop all of those people from accessing with or without proof.
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
Now, the argument that this is really bad press and fewer people would want to attend concerts/wear t-shirts/buy CDs might make a bit more of a reasonable approach. Also the thought that there may be many new Metallica fans now that more people can get their music... but then I guess that's what radio is for.
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
I am sure that with the current heated debate over the legality of Mp3 file format and all the questions of right and wrong that come into play. But I am wondering. What band wants to get rid of more fans? Someone want to tell me the long term goal of turning people off to your music? God forbid, they didn't sell out!
Something bothers me about this whole thing that Metallica is thinking they are cool enough to block computer users from downloading music that often depresses them. Why isn't Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera blocking people?
Cause there is a lot of babysitting money out there
Double Standards. loathe em love em just don't question them.
Atticka
No sig here...
if you look what I said, it was MOST slashdotters, not all. There are still some(about 2%) that stick with their opinions. The other 101% change their opinion on what should be done, with regard to what needs to be "free".
As I've stated many times before, I believe that napster is alright, but the users that have illegal mp3's are wrong. The reason im saying slashdot is hypocritical (no, im not a troll, just expressing my opinions), is because it's true. Examples that immediately come to mind are: 1)bruce P. When it was found out that Beos was using Gpl'd code, a lot of slashdotters were in an uproar. 2) Metallica. When metallica/RIAA were TRYING to preserve their copyrights, many posts included variants of the following: "they don't need the money" or "they sold out, their opinion doesn't matter". How does selling out or the amount of money a person have affect freedoms??
metallica is doing just what the slashdot community said they wanted.....going after the crooks, not napster. But don't worry, most people's opinions will be against Metallica.
----Freedom has no exceptions, but Slashdot does.
You can't just assert that concertgoers "own the copyright" of songs taped at a Metallica concert, even if Metallica allowed the taping, without analyzing the circumstances of Metallica's "encouragement". How did Metallica encourage listeners to tape concerts? Did they say that listeners were allowed to tape songs and distribute them without any limitations whatsoever? Or tape them only for personal use? Or did Metallica leave the scope of publication unstated? It is certainly arguable that one who makes a personal copy of a song available for unauthorized copying through Napster is engaged in copyright infringement, even if other users have not downloaded that particular copy of the song.
250,000 people trading Metallica, of all bands...
Now that is just sad.
absolutely right on most counts...that's why the only dickheads suing are mega-money bands who OWN their record labels. I don't see any bands with lousy contracts hopping on the litigation trail yet...no unsigned bands either...no lesser known blues stars...no jazz combos with 10 records under their belt...just big money businessmen who like to pretend they are still "artists"
It's not funny till someone gets hurt.
Ok, supposedly the suit is to protect their rights and thus protect the revenue they get from CD sales . . . but if CD sales are based on satisfied/happy customers, this moves seems to be counter productive. I mean, what will be accomplished by giving this list of users to Napster? Suppose Napster blocks these users, I can see a few outcomes:
1. People will get their MP3s with other programs. In this case, nothing has been accomplished.
2. People will not be able to MP3s (because they know of no other method) and will get angry. Who will they get angry at? Probably Metallica. This will potentially hurt CD sales if they were previously Metallica fans.
3. One stops downloading MP3s and does nothing. It was great while it lasted, but no big deal.
4. People can't get MP3s so they go and buy the album. I list this as a possible outcome, but I don't think that this will happen. Once individuals get used to free MP3s, why would they go back to paying? I would guess most people would try to find other methods of getting MP3s.
Of the listed options, #4 is the only way that it would help revenue. Since a majority of people probably don't fall into #4, it seems that this action just hurts profits. Add that to legal fees and in the end Metallica will lose money. From an economical point of view, this action is just plain stupid.
But nowhere in Napster does it show if a user actually owns the CD. What if I rip copies of tracks for my own backup and store it on my hard drive? That's perfectly legal (they're backups).
Is Metallica saying they have a right to sue people who have already bought their CDs?
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
here's something I found on a site that sums up everything I've been trying to say.. acept for the Scour thing... I just dont know why they can make such a big deal of Napster and ignore Scour.
by Kurt Nimmo, an independent observer Lars, The first news item I read this morning was about Metallica. Cnet News writes that Metallica has identified 335,435 Napster users who are sharing your music. In response, your lawyer will deliver a 60,000 page document of user information to Napster and demand that they block the offenders. I must admit, Lars, when I read this news item I had to chuckle. First, I seriously doubt you know the names of these users. More than likely, you have a very long list of IP addresses, which is different than a list of names and specific crimes. Second, I can't help but think that the reason you and your lawyer, Howard King, did this is for the publicity - to keep your name in the news and send a message to people who have the audacity to love and share your music outside of the sanctioned distribution channels. Lars, I believe you and Metallica - to say nothing of the RIAA and the music industry - are suffering under a delusion. The act of sharing music files with other Metallica music lovers is not theft. It does not deny you and your record company income. If anything, it multiples your income. In the past, Metallica has effectively used supposedly unsanctioned recordings - commonly known as bootlegs - to promote the band and gain more visibility in a highly competitive industry. Now that your standing in the music industry is established, do you want to recall those bootleg recordings? Would you sue Metallica fans for distributing them? Napster is far less of a threat to you than the above mentioned bootlegged CDs or LPs. In fact, since you released the material yourself, as a promotion tactic, these recordings cannot even be considered bootlegs. Regardless, they exist in the physical world - there are a fixed number of them, and they are probably distributed widely across your fan base. It is the very scarcity of these recordings that make them more of a threat to you than any number of files shared by Napster. In a classic economic sense, MP3 files are nearly worthless because they can be copied indefinitely and do not occupy space in the physical world. The free distribution of these files - monetarily worthless yet culturally and intellectually valuable - does not threaten the existing economic structure that has served you and Metallica so handsomely over the years. If you were to ask Napster users if they would rather have Master of Puppets on CD or MP3, I bet the vast majority of them would choose the former. In fact, I bet most Metallica fans who now download your music via Napster in the MP3 format already own your CDs. If not, and they find a song on Napster they like, chances are they will eventually buy the CD. I am not sure you fully understand the difference between theft of tangible CDs and the copying of virtual music in the MP3 format. It is my guess that you were invited by music industry executives and lawyers to see Napster in action. More than likely they told you that copying is not only a form of theft that denies you income, but also takes control of the music away from you and Metallica. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Lars, hunting down people who share music files will not stop music copying. The lawyers and courts may throw a handful of people in prison - convicted of violating the RICO statutes, which were designed to go after drug dealers and gun smugglers, not music fans sharing files. When the smoke clears, people will continue to share music files. It is my prediction that many of them will no longer be Metallica fans. They will find your tactics ugly and unfair and may decide to boycott your products. In the long run, Metallica's response to music file sharing will cost you support and money. Fans don't like to be compared to drug dealers and money launderers. You alienate them at your peril. Sincerely, Kurt Nimmo
thank you Kurt! there is intelligent life out there!
I find it odd that people equate "copying a thing" with "stealing a thing". Napster users can hardly be branded as criminals. They want to share music! What's wrong with that?
"Owning a CD is no defense; well, it wasn't in the mp3.com case anyway. Fair use does not apply under the DMCA, because it's a law bought by the copyright cartels."
I think it becomes a defense when they actually knock on my door, and want to take me to jail. I think I will fork out a few bucks and start to get my cd's "stamped" notarised (sic?) (So I can show proof of ownership at the trial.)
(I had intented that to be funny, but now that I think of it, based on the sad state of affairs...It does not sound like a bad idea)
IMHO
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
If I had 5 minutes with Lars: A. Uhhh..I remember saving 2 weeks of allowance (5 bucks a week for a 12 year old), and then walking 3 1/2 miles to the record store to purchase "Kill Em All" when it first came out...Sometime over the next 15 odd years -- "Seek and Destroy" has devoloped an odd scratchy sound....I discover that I can use Napster to Breeth new life into "Motorbreath"..... And now you are saying you want to sue me????? This whole Metallica VS. Napster thing is worse than your last 3 albums!!! (Which I still paid cash for -- thank you) B. If you guys are really starving, and need the cash -- I understand their are some humanitarian programs already underway that are aware of your plight.....(paylars.com) I just find it ironic that the bands that already have more money than they know what to do with, are the ones throwing up their arms in disgust -- while the "unsighned / starving artists" love the free pub. (Which I am sure Metallica would have 16 years ago)..Before they were rich P.S. Thanks for being honest and answering the question about what album you thought to be your best(Ride The Lightning)....At least that goes to show you are not totally ignorant to the fact that you have sold out to "the man"... An Ex Fan.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
OK. Given that Napster has an undenible, perfect, unbroken account of each and every transaction done on all of it's servers since it began (and that's one heck of a given), I'd like to see it try. How are they supposed to know if an MP3 that's being traded is legal or not? Last I checked, there's no way to tell, especially if the person isn't connected at the time.
Great, so now they're blocking legit Metallica MP3 trials. (must be deleted after 24 hours) Given that now everyone is going to sign up again with a dynamic IP address and an assumed name (assuming they didn't do that the first time around), now Napster is in even deeper than before. Now people are virtually untraceable.
Personally, I want to know how they compiled that list of 335,000. Did they keep a record of everything and get it from there? Did they track IP addresses and stalk the users from afar? Did they just put tracking software on for a weekend tracking any searches for, trades, and screen names of people who traded Metallica MP3s? None of them are accurate (except maybe the first one, which I doubt they have room for anyway). Perhaps they just rattled off some screen names and attatched the "real names" and submitted that as a list.
The way I see it, it's win-win. Either Napster grows in size and anonymity while people start boycotting Metallica (which I prefer), or Napster grows in size, but doesn't allow trading of Metallica songs (which I don't like anyway).
Busco a alguien que me quiera como yo la quiera.
I think part of the problem is that the issue of copyright needs to be revisited. In the last ten thousand years or so of human history, recorded music and copyright have just been a small blip, a century or so. Creating art, recoding it, and being able to sell it again and again for the rest of an artists right is a relative aberration. For most of history, a musician had to perform every night to earn is living. To actually go to work every day like most of us do. I'm not saying that we should get rid of copyrights entirely, just that perhaps their present form is no longer reasonable. Perhaps a 10 year lifespan berfore going to the public domain, instead of the life of the artist plus 50 years (or something like that)?
That is a good idea. Someone should moderate this up higher. I think the more relevant point is that there are possibly a higher number of Napster users and more informed people in Slashdot. I would think that a general chat with Metallica will turn out unproductive.
--Scott
That Metallica is one of very few bands who actually own exclusive copy rights to thier own music. Thats' why they can do this under thier onw name and not have to deal with Electra lawyers. They even have exclusive rights to thier orignal Master tapes of all thier albums. A little fact that Electra records does not seem to mind. So to all those Artists that want to follow in Metallicas foot steps you had better own the rights to your materail or yo will be cutting your own throats and helping the sleazy recordget richer instead. I know very few artists today actually get rights to their own music. Most will sign 10 album slavery deals just to get thier foot in the door then later find out the are stuck.
Egfrow
I think Metallica is going to get their ass slammed... They claim that over 335,000 Napster users pirated their songs. I just logged in to Napster. There aren't even 4,000 people logged in! Despite what they may claim, there couldn't possibly be that many people logged in at once, and I would seriously doubt over a single weekend (that's when they monitored Napster).
Even if they found all those songs, how are they going to prove in court that each and every individual file is actually a copy of one of their songs? What are they going to do, listen to them all? Attempt to download them all? Hehehehehe... they're in waaaaaay over their heads on this one.
hahahahaha, all of you people likes metelica and you go for them while they ban every napster users left and right. Now which Mp3 community is next?
Most musicians that actually have copies of their music made through MP3 formatting or devices such as MP3 players/computers have to be quite rich in the first place for that type of acknowledgment from fanatics anyway. So in other words, they have a large sum of money already, as does the record label which produces their tracks/albums. They should concentrate more on their music and devotion to their fans, rather than worrying about how much money they are gaining or losing. They are rich (99 out of 100) already. I think that burning CD's should be perfectly legal and that making MP3 files should also be.
Justin
Justin
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