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RIAA Claims Initial Legal Win vs. Napster
A number of people have written in with the initial news blurb that the RIAA [?] has won the initial battle against Napster. The US District Court in San Fransico has ruled that Napster is not just a "mere conduit" for files, but that it is actually liable for material transfered by the program. This comes on the heels of MP3.com's recent loss to the RIAA as well. Ouch.
I've got to question the defense's legal tactics of presenting no other witnesses or information besides a tape recording loop of Shawn Fanning screaming, "You can't stop the technology!" over and over.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Napster told people where to find files. they didn't distribute any files, and responsible users wouldn't have broken any laws. Those people who did choose to break laws did so by their own actions, and are the ones soley responsible.
You can find mp3 files on any search engine or IRC client.... what's the difference besides efficiency?
very bad for everyone if this story is true. I don't care about mp3 files at all personally, but this kind of precedent is a very bad one for freedom of information in general.
________
1995: Microsoft - "Resistance is futile"
Is the judge a retard? They just ruled that an ISP is not liable for what passes through their networks and now they do this?. Our legal system is seriously fscked up.
This seems to be little more than a RIAA blurb press release to trumpet the news from Friday.... this is generically known as "spin." Other articles I read said that there were matters of fact to be determined by a jury... that means this case is going to progress.
(IANAL - I am now a lawyer - passed the bar exam on Saturday!)
==
"This is the nineties. You don't just go around punching people. You have to say something cool first."
``Napster is about facilitating piracy, and trying to build a business on the backs of artists and copyright owners,'' Rosen of the RIAA said.
If only we could make that illegal, then we might actually have reasonably priced music where the artist actually made money from sales of recordings.
That said, this isn't really a full judgement. Napster was requesting a summary judgement. IANAL but I believe that means that we still have several months of court battles ahead to see what's up with Napster.
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
OK, so they will probably crush Napster, the company will go down, end of case. I do sympathise with the developers there, but other than that I don't care much about its future, because of the original flaw in the design - centralized db. Once you have that, "they" have someone to sue, "they" have IP addresses to block, and so on. "They" will always win in such situation.
But there is something beautiful around the corner - gnutella and its open source clones. Yes, I know none of them work as well as napster, but it's just a matter of time and figuring out how to cache headers efficiently. Once the development is de-centralized and GPL-ed and file distribution is also de-centralized - what can "they" do?!
Sue everyone? They might, but it is much, much harder than suing just one company, especially taking into account that the end-users don't reap any direct financial benefits, unlike Napster.
While on the subject - what are the best open-source gnutella clones?
Hell I am going to uuencode all my mp3's and post them to slashdot forums, slashdot will be sued in days... I mean, I don't have any mp3's, but if I did...
(Are they still watching me?)
Seriously, though, I think the RIAA should sue Iomega for creating the zip disk and Al Gore for creating the Internet, both which are used to trade
The Information Age can wait dammit, the Musical Revoluation (which oddly enough is also the name of a boardway musical) must come first.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
A recording industry trade group, announced today that they will be expanding their lawsuit to include other software vendors including Microsoft Corp. A representative for the RIAA remarked that because of the resent victory against the hacker program Napster, they feel the path is open for closing all piracy havens.
The RIAA claims that Microsofts "Network Neighborhood", when combined with the search functionality of the suspiciously named "Find..." command, can be used to search for and copy copyrighted materials.
Microsoft rebutted saying that the "Network Neighborhood" is an innovative tool used to aid the flow of information between computers. They went on to say that this technology, which can be used legitimately, is already in jeapordy if the Justice Department breaks the company apart. "Without a central leadership, invention will cease in the Windows Operating system. A second lawsuit would make it difficult for Microsoft to compete against other insurgent companies and would stifle the global economy," said a Microsoft representative.
The RIAA rejects this argument as handwaving. They feel there is no economic guarantee for any company. Individual artists, on the other hand, deserve the fullest protection under the law in order to make a profit for their protecting trade group.
Napster, meanwhile, welcomes the opportunity to work with the software giant, Microsoft in its epic battle against the recording industry giant. A spokewoman for Napster said that their position in the lawsuit is comparable to the pebble David used to slay Goliath. She neglected to mention which company was Goliath.
U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Patel in San Frasisco mentioned that because of the magnitude of the case, millions and perhaps billions of U.S. government money might have to be spent in lawyers' fees during the case. "This case promises to create a larger commotion than Kennith Starr or Judge Ito every accomplished," she commented.
Now they are trying their best to stifle any attempts to connect artists with the buying public via any methods other than the old traditional method of going through a traditional label (which are members of RIAA).
(And don't give me the tired old excuse that CDs are "worth more" that cassettes due to their higher quality. If that logic held, then that new P3 that you bought to play online 3D first-person shooters should have cost you several million dollars (compared to an original Tandy TRS-80 4K computer with cassette tape drive, circa 1978...))
Given that the RIAA has stolen and gouged customers and musicians for decades, there is only one reasonable way to stop them -- use ONLY free music.
Here are some ideas:
1) Check out as many cd's as possible from local libraries. Reduce them to mp3 format and place them on your own server. If you do not have access to a server for the necessary amount of time, burn copies of CDs and distribute them to your friends.
2) If you must buy CDs, do so only from used music stores or thrift shops that do not carry new CDs and are not paying the corporate music machine. This cuts the revenue stream to the RIAA corporations.
3) Enjoy free music from the mp3.com independant bands, rather than RIAA supported corporate music.
4) Consider researching/finding a radio plugin card that works under your OS of choice. Set it up such that a simple tap of a key starts/stops recording. With a decent radio station (that doesn't voice over the start and finish of songs) this could be an excellent source of free music for distribution via CD or server.
5) Above all, ridicule 'tallica and dre whenever and however possible -- independence and freedom were great things when these musicians were hungry, but know that they've had a taste of corporate greed, there's no way back.
The only way to stop the machine once the legal system starts supporting it is direct noncompliance. Insure that on a daily basis, you act to reduce the RIAA member's revenue streams wherever possible.
Should reasonable alternatives raise their head (limp bizkit) don't shy from buying their stuff! these are the musicians with guts.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
This sets no precedent whatsoever. If napster was a file sharing service which just happened to transfer MP3 files, it wouldn't have jumped into the spotlight. Instead Napster is an MP3 sharing service. the vast majority of files it transfers are illegal. If "information wants to be free" is really true, how come no one is posting Windows 2000 CD images on their websites? What about publishing Linux distributions without even a word mentioning the source? Because that information is owned by someone else. Why does everyone treat music as being something different. If you want to share your musical tastes with your friends, invite them over to your house, go to see a show, encourage them to get the CD or whatever.
What's it going to take for people to realize that Napster is actively sapping revenue's from artists? They're taking what artists sell and giving it away for free. That's what Microsoft did to netscape and that was wrong. And Napster is far from altruistic... They're a company. They're making money off the artists involved. How else would they come up with $2 million to fund Limp Bizkits tour? Why shouldn't the artists have a crack at some of that money?
There are the laws, on the one hand, and then there is what people DO. More and more, people are going to trade digital music, video, etc. The courts and companies will catch up once it's a fait acompli.
Maybe we'll have to switch to Gnutella for a while. Maybe Freenet. Maybe some stuff will be hard to find for a while. But we will continue to share electronic data.
The problem is that Napster only has one use, transfering MP3 files. ... A more general system such as gnutella does not have these kind of problems.
But with the Wrapster archiver, an MP3 file need not contain an MPEG audio layer 3 stream to be sent using the Napster software. Wrapster is your typical tar(1)-like archiver, but it makes archives (*.wrapster.mp3) that Napster can shoot over the Internet. To put it another way: <whore>you can use Wrapster and Napster to distribute the latest version of a certain OS kernel so that the official servers don't get slashdotted when 2.4 is released</whore>, especially if you napigate to an opennap server.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Sometimes I wonder. It seems as though the US is ruled by corporations now. Otherwise how could such an injustice as this occur?
Napster was never intended for illegal acts. They do absolutely everything they can legally and fairly do to prevent piracy; granted this isn't much (a copyright warning in the splash screen is all you can do), but they do everything they can. Simply because something can be used illegally is not grounds to criminalize it. Take acetylene torches. I can use such a torch to help me build or service machinery; this is totally legal. I can also use it to kill someone or burn a building to the ground; this is clearly illegal. Furthermore, this tool lets me carry out these illegal acts in a far more efficient manner then, say, a match or a cigarette lighter. The manufacturers of the torch do everything they can reasonably do to prevent illegal use (which, again, amounts to essentially just a warning label). But they can't control their users. Does this mean acetylene torches should be made illegal? Of course not. Why, then, with Napster, a program made with purely benign intentions even if it does have the potential for abuse?
Now, there is one critical flaw with Napster: it only shares MP3's. If it shared all types of files, RIAA's ludicrous argument would have been much weaker. But it is still nothing but a conduit. Rather like the Internet. I can still get MP3's in myriad other ways; should the Net be made illegal because of this? Again, no. That would be stupid. And so is this.
(btw - yes, artists are getting royally screwed between corporations and "pirates".. it is a very bad thing .. stopping this abuse is up to us individuals.. currently i don't rip (no time) but when i start, i'll definately pay lars (it's the ethical thing to do.)
I pay musicians with the time, effort, and bandwidth it takes to promote their music, just like the record companies. But I don't and won't SELL it. That's for them to do. If we can establish the idea that it is o.k. to share, but that selling is the stealing, we'll be fine. By creating a social contract where you agree to only buy from the copyright holder we can stop any real pirates dead, and let those of us that want to share be happy. That's what being GNUML is all about.
oh, and about Paylars. I think it's a joke. Regardless, I've already learned that whining children should NOT get what they want as a general rule. Judge me accordingly.
--
+&x
If you get beyond the actual technologies involved for a second, and look at it from a product driven point of view...
Napster is popular.
Napster is a company.
Napster's popularity could transalte into $$$ for napster.
Napster drives it's popularity from it's ability to assist users in sharing mp3.
Napster knows damn well that it is popular because it helps people find pirated music. Without the pirated music, napster would be nothing. YOU KNOW THIS IS TRUE.
Now, I don't debate that mp3 is legal, that there is lots of good, freely available legal music as well.. just that Napster drives it's popularity from helping people do something illegal.
If FTP was just like naspter, why isn't it being sued? Hey.. why isn't gnutella being sued? Simple. Napster is a company that is profiting from piracy. Period.
A subtle but important point. Although the article suggested that:
The US District Court in San Fransico has ruled that Napster is not just a "mere conduit" for files, but that it is actually liable for material transfered by the program.
the truth is rather more interesting. The actual opinion makes clear that the ruling made no determination of liability at all.
This opinion merely denied the defendant's motion for Summary Judgment -- it granted no decision in favor of the plaintiffs, who must still prove up and prevail in their case of infringement. Summary Judgment is a means by which a party can short-cut a trial on an issue for which there is no genuine question of material fact. By deciding that the question of liability must go to trial (over the DMCA issue), the judge most certainly did not make a finding of liability. In fact, S.J. motions are rarely granted.
More important, it is significant to note that the issue here was not liability itself, but rather whether the defendant fell under a safe harbor (get out of jail free card) set forth in a bill intended to protect ISPs. The fact that the safe harbor doesn't apply still means that the plaintiff must prove his case, get past the common law "Netcom" standard, and then the Supreme Court "Sony Betamax" case.
Without having reviewed the opinion carefully, this much is certain -- the opinion did not make any finding that the defendant's are liable. Only that the game remains afoot.
If you review the opinion, you will find that Judge Patel, in order to twist the safe harbor statute out of bounds, was forced to arrive at the following conclusion:
In other words, Judge P found that the safe harbor didn't apply only because Napster did not itself reproduce, distribute or make derivative works! In other words, Napster did not ITSELF DIRECTLY infringe any copyrights, although it very likely provided the means by which others may do so. (the ones whose systems do provide connections).
Unfortunately for the plaintiffs in this case, however, the Supreme Court has already determined the conditions under which a party may be derivatively liable for a direct infirngement by another. In Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios, 464 U.S. 417 (1984), the Supreme Court clearly stated that there can be no infringement because
In other words, since Napster is "merely [] capable of substantial noninfringing uses," there cannot be indirect infringement. This, taken with Judge Patel's finding that there was no direct infringement (or she must revisit her determination that the safe harbor did not apply), leads to an ugly Hobson's choice for the Plaintiff's. There is no question that they must lose, just an ambiguity as to how they must lose.
That being said, I am hardly a scholar of the facts of this case, and these conclusions may not be applicable at the end of the day. Nothing I have written here should be taken as legal advice. Still, I think there is quite a glimmer of light in the particular findings Judge Patel issued in her Opinion.