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.

Comments

Mental Judge

[pirodude]

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.

Re:Mental Judge

[rjeong]

Before you go spouting your horn, try reading the law that they are arguing, or at least the summary. The Copyright Office Summary of 'The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998' states under Limitation for Transitory Communications

In general terms, section 512(a) limits the liability of service providers in circumstances where the provider merely acts as a data conduit, transmitting digital information from one point on a network to another at someone else's request. This limitation covers acts of transmission, routing, or providing connections for the information, as well as the intermediate and transient copies that are made automatically in the operation of a network. In order to qualify for this limitation, the service provider's activities must meet the following conditions: The transmission must be initiated by a person other than the provider. The transmission, routing, provision of connections, or copying must be carried out by an automatic technical process without selection of material by the service provider. The service provider must not determine the recipients of the material. Any intermediate copies must not ordinarily be accessible to anyone other than anticipated recipients, and must not be retained for longer than reasonably necessary. The material must be transmitted with no modification to its content.

So this has nothing to do with the judge. It is the Congress and the way they designed the law. Here's three links or at least skim before you go delving into this subject.

Here's the Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act of 1995 in fullhttp:/ /thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d104:SN00227:|TO M:/bss/d104query.html|

Here's the summary of the Digital Millenium Act of 1998 http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/le gislation/dmca.pdf

Here is the Digital Millenium Act of 1998 in full http:/ /thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d105:HR02281:|TO M:/bss/d105query.html|

Read up!!!!

Rich

Re:Mental Judge

[MO!]

In order to qualify for this limitation, the service provider?s activities must meet the following conditions:

The transmission must be initiated by a person other than the provider.

With Napster, this IS the case - The user initiates the transfer via their local client program

The transmission, routing, provision of connections, or copying must be carried out by an automatic technical process without selection of material by the service provider.

With Napster, this IS the case - The user searches and manually selects what material they want to download.

The service provider must not determine the recipients of the material.

With Napster, this IS the case - The user searches and manually selects what material they want to download.

Any intermediate copies must not ordinarily be accessible to anyone other than anticipated recipients, and must not be retained for longer than reasonably necessary.

With Napster, this IS the case - The intermediate copies are NOT contained on Napster's Network or Servers, they are directly transferred via the internet from the source PC to the target PC.

The material must be transmitted with no modification to its content.

With Napster, this IS the case - The intermediate copies are NOT modified by Napster's Network or Servers, they are directly transferred via the internet from the source PC to the target PC.

So basically, I don't see what you're argument is... Perhaps you should be familiar with the Napster service before spouting your horn.

What type of ruling is this?

[__aapbgd5977]

"Rejecting" the conduit claim is somewhat essential to Napster's case (from what I've read), but the article doesn't say what kind of ruling the judge handed down. It seems to say it was in response to the RIAA's motion for Summary Judgment. A MSJ is one of the opening volleys in any lawsuit, and does somewhat narrow the scope of the case.

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."

Re:What type of ruling is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

This "ruling" came as a result of what is known as a "summary judgement." Basically, Napster asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit based on a given code of law. In this case, they were saying that they shouldn't be responsible for what is on thier system. This ruling DOES NOT say for sure whether or not Napster is responsible for content. All it says is that based on what was presented in court, the judge needs more information. This will be presented at trial. This is pure spin and signifies nothing. It has no legal weight, other than signaling that the case will go to trial. This Yahoo! article is nothing more than a press release posing as news. The RIAA is basically hoping that this gets out and scares all the napster users (which it may, given the poor wording and misleading sentences). Disclaimer: I am a lawyer, however the preceding statement should not be construed at personal legal advice, as it merely reflects opinion.

The pot and the kettle

[Borealis]

I love this quote:

``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.

Re:Bad Precedent

[jbarnett]

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 .mp3 files. In fact IMHO they should take it a step further and sue ALL cpu manufactors (Intel, AMD, etc), because you can't convert or play .mp3 without some type of CPU. It should be illegal to own a computer or have an Internet connection (or even a phone line) because these can and will be used to trade .mp3 files and rip off the music industry.

The Information Age can wait dammit, the Musical Revoluation (which oddly enough is also the name of a boardway musical) must come first.

RIAA expands lawsuit to include Microsoft Corp

[bjk4]

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.

RIAA needs to be sued for price-fixing/racketering

[weave]

When will someone sue RIAA? All of its member companies coincidently all agree to charge more for pre-recorded CDs than cassettes of the same material, even though the cost of manufacturing a CD is far lower than a cassette.

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...))

Re:that sucks.

[Mr. Slippery]

Music is NOT information. The thing that bothers me most about the napster/mp3 craze of late is that people have started thinking of music as a commodity rather than the art it is.

The text of Hamlet is information, which can be digitally encoded in ASCII. Copies of Hamlet can be bought and sold; books are a commodity. Does that mean that great plays like Hamlet aren't art? Fsck no.

A recording of music is information, which can be digitally encoded in MP3 (or .wav, or whatever). Copies of the recording can be bought and sold; recordings are a commodity. The conclusion is left as an exercise for the reader.

Stopping the RIAA

[small_dick]

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.

Re:Bad Precedent

[um... Lucas]

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?

Is there even a government anymore?

[Millennium]

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.