Slashdot Mirror
An MP3 Update
There's been a number of things happening of late in the MP3 world - first off, MP3.com has complied with the Federal Court ruling by silencing (their term) major label albums. They're still including classical and indie tracks, but not much major label stuff. Also, ZD is carrying a story about Dr. Dre gearing up to ask Napster to ban users a la Metallica. I also got an e-mail from folks at SpeakOut who are trying to help out people hit by the Metallica/Napster deal - so, if you got banned check it out.
I'm not surprised that mp3.com lost in court - their whole site is built on copied material and beam it was just the one which was easiest to take to court. mp3.com's entire business is based around pirating other people's work and making it their own....
a d.html t =artist&tid=634033) - even their artsts copy mp3.com's competitors.
mp3.com more or less got the unsigned/low profile artists from the internet underground music archive.
my.mp3.com looks exactly like myplay.com - I'm just waiting for mp3.com to copy the 'Publish A Playlist' functionality into my.mp3.com - I can see it coming. (at least
They even stole the 'Anywhere, Anytime' line from myplay.....
Or how about this
http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/78/penny_framst
Penny Framstad - offer a track called "Even Angels Fall". While at myplay.com one of the free tracks they offer is the *Original* version (http://www.myplay.com/mp/promo/free_music.jsp?ac
;-)
So... can anyone point out what mp3.com has done which makes them the hero in so many slashdotter's eyes? They're like microsoft, rushing out copies of other people's technology and trying to make that the standard by being the biggest.
We are living in a part of history that is seeing a lot of changes. I see this type of stories like the battle of the new way of doing things versus the old way of doing things, and all those executives and groups of persons are trying to keep everything static and without change, because they profit a lot of this way of doing things. I see the future as everything being Open, and we are definitely seeing this in the computer industry. Soon no one will have to worry about money. If we were in such a society, people could share their work for free, distribute it, being books, music, software, videos, etc. Everyone will have the chance to experience the creation of that person, and the person that created it will not need any monetary reward, because his necessities will be rewarded and all the rewards he wants is people appreciating what he does, and the intellectual boost he gets doing such work.
EHC
Although this is true under the DMCA, it was my impression that, originally, Napster stated that it would remove users who were violating copyright, PERIOD. It did not say 'following the guidelines of the DMCA.. blah blah blah...'.
It also notified Metallica's lawyers that, if metallica would be so kind as to point out which users were infringing, they would be blocked.
Some corrections:
The RIAA did oppose CD-Rs and recordable tape.. they just lost those battles.
Also, the Grateful Dead encouraged the taping of concerts and the trading of those live tapes for no profit. They were greatly opposed to selling those shows for a profit.
When they found a CD store that carried "imports," rather than sue the place out of business, they just bought it. The imports went away, the employees kept their job, and everyone was happy.
Maybe Metallica should buy napster....
wish
---
$ su
who are you?
$ whoami
whoami: no login associated with uid 1010.
In order to get your account reinstated, you would need to ceertify under penalty of perjury, that you have not and will not make Metallica MP3's available.
And I believe that you have to supply "real" contact information when you do so. So it might be easier to track you down later, if you are in violation a second time.
Not to mention that if you are in violation a second time, you will be guilty of all the previous stuff, plus most likely perjury. And that one is definitely a biggie.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
So perhaps Napster was trying to send a hidden message...they weren't just removing users, they were removing "eleet" users.
Something to think about, anyway.
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
MP3.com Voluntarily Disables Major Label Content From My.MP3.com
e nce
Dear My.MP3.com member,
As you may already be aware, MP3.com has been engaged in an ongoing legal process with the five major record labels in regard to their recordings stored in My.MP3.com. While we have been working to settle these matters with the labels, MP3.com has voluntarily agreed to disable their content in the My.MP3.com database while negotiations continue apace. As a result, you will, at this time, be unable to access the major labels' content through your My.MP3.com account. We will continue our efforts to restore your music as soon as possible, and we hope that you will continue to enjoy the remainder of the My.MP3.com content, including all indie label content, the more than 350 albums in the Classical Music Channel and the 400,000-plus songs available to you for free on MP3.com.
Michael Robertson
Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
For more information, go to:
http://click.mp3.com/c/c_cNaa/n_783173713/u_sil
Go directly to My.MP3.com:
http://click.mp3.com/c/c_cNab/n_783173713/u_my
The article says:
"Under the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, if an Internet service provider receives a complaint about a user who is allegedly violating a copyright, the ISP is supposed to immediately remove that user from its service. But if that user thinks he has been misidentified and submits a legal counternotification, then the copyright holder has 10 days to decide whether to take legal action. If the copyright holder doesn't initiate legal action against the user, the ISP must reinstate the user.
"Now, Napster, identifying with the ISPs, is using this law to force Metallica to take up its piracy concerns with individual Napster users. On a page on its Web site, Napster explains this. "The Napster software will direct all users barred as a result of Metallica's allegations to an infringement notification page. That page explains the notice that Metallica has given us, explains who Metallica has stated to us it intends to block, and gives the user an opportunity to submit a counter notification if the user has been misidentified. If the user has been misidentified, and requests to be reinstated by submitting a counter notification under penalty of perjury, then, unless Metallica chooses to pursue legal action against that user within 10 working days of being notified of that user's counter notification, the user is entitled to be reinstated."
***
So, what would happen if all those Metallica fans who own all the CDs for the MP3's they were trading stepped forward and gave counternotification?
Would Metallica have a legal leg to stand on?
-- Diana Hsieh
-- Diana Hsieh
GeekPress: The Weirder Side of Tech News
Both Metallica and Dr. Dre are coming to do a concert in Seattle. They will appear in the same concert celebrating the opening of the Experience Music Project. Sounds like a good opertunity to say what I think of there little napster stunt. Muhahahahahahaha. First, though, I must get my anti-RIAA stickers from thinkgeek.
First of all, I could understand smaller bands sueing napster, because they may very well be taking money from a band that has very little if no following to begin with. However Selloutica, and Dr. Dre are QUITE established and have money to wipe their asses with thousand dollar bills! They are the last people who should be worring about losing money! Especially when the majority of the public doesn't even know what an mp3 is. CD sales have been astronomical over the past year, and yet they still complain!
As for banning users, boohoo! So now I just have to take 5 minutes to use a proxy and get a new username. They just don't get it.
-- From my Best Friend (Written to me over ICQ): "i was gonna go to a party...but i had to reinstall windows"
I went into my.mp3.com today and noticed that *all* of my CDs have been silenced while only a few have a "locked" icon next to them. Playing any track gives me a voice recording saying the track has been silenced, even though many of my CDs are not from nor distributed by major labels.
No doubt MP3.com just went and silenced every beamed CD to cover their asses. If you have some CDs on your account which you *know for sure* are not in any way from major labels then you might want to e-mail them to give attention to the error.
ian.
ian
Where the hell is the EFF when you need them?
/ k.d / earth trickle / Monkeys vs. Robots Films /
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
I am (Napster username: Neuracnu_Coyote) one of the over 300,000 users who have been banned from Napster's network for supposedly propagating pirated MP3s of Metallica songs. As mentioned in a previous feedback article, Metallica and NetPD claim that the list they have produced is 99% accurate, admitting that they inadvertently included some 3000 innocent users in their list of offenders. I am also one of these 3000 users.
I don't have the bandwidth to handle all the requests I would get from Napster, so I do what most people do - I make my shared directory an empty directory and, when a file gets downloaded, I move it out of there and refresh my file library to make sure there's nothing in there for people to download. I NEVER SERVE FILES.
How, then, can Napster and Metallica claim that I have, and say that they have caught me in the act? Where is this proof? May I see it? Is a federal judge just goint to take NetPD's word for it that I pirated music?
And that reminds me, when exactly did this ban go into effect? I read about it on Slashdot, then immediately started up Napster to see if people were still trading Metallica songs. I was able to log in and found that, yes, they were. I got a good chuckle out of this and shut down the client. Last night, I started the client to find that I had been banned! It also said that I should visit their Counter Notification page (http://infringe.napster.com/metallica.html) in order to protest my ban. I'm having a lawyer friend of mine go over this to make sure that my signing it will not set into motion a whole set of legal shenanigans only to end with me getting spanked with a charge of perjury.
But now, I should get back to the subject of the message. I went into the registry and removed my user information before uninstalling and reinstalling the software. I tried to get it to create a new user, but after going through the signup process, I got the same message that my account, for the new username, had been banned - they must be doing it by IP address as well as usernames.
In the meantime, banned (windows) Napster users can download Napigator, a client that allows you to navigate through official Napster servers as well as OpenNap and other unofficial Napster servers and connect to those without bother from Metallica's musical meddling. Either that, or Gnutella, IRC, ICQ or any of the other genies that have popped out of the bottle.
--
So.. you were violating copyright law by distributing material (apocalyptica) that you had no legal right to do so, and also violating the napster usage agreement (that requries you to not use napster to traffic in copyrighted works), and you were banned....
And now you are mad?
Certainly, the reason you were banned (for sharing metallica) may be incorrect, but you are still violating the law in a blatant and outright fashion.
If you "cannot believe" something, it is often a very good course of action to not believe it. Follow this course of action through your life and you will end up both believing a lot less shit, and having less of your time wasted by people like me.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Just download an early 2.0 release of Napster from zdnet.com, it doesn't have any of the banning code. Worked for me after a few uninstalls.
Rome fell, not because of barbarian hoards, but because of the MP3s these uncivilized men listened to...
When the Titanic went down, the last thing heard was the bubbly drowning of the captain's MP3s playing...
When Hitler was in art school in the 1920's, he heard music in MP3 format, and the rest is history...
Based on everything you read nowadays, I have to believe that the MP3 technology is the proverbial anti-christ, and all because it keeps the members of Metallica from buying more houses. Why did the RIAA not resist the incursion of CD-Rs? These have had the potential for years of costing them huge money. Why do they not resist tape players having a "record" button? That is the easiest way to reproduce music.
I think the whole MP3 thing just shows how afraid people are of computer technology. Because it is on a computer, it must be a more insidious evil. I agree that it is easier to trade files on Napster than to trade Grateful Dead tapes by hand, but the human networks will never really threaten the bands in the way true pirates do.
Those people who mass-produce CDs in rickety Singapore warehouses are the people who really poach from the music industry, and they sell the product, creating a zero-sum loss of revenues for the recording industry. Those people who trade are really just in the promotion business, and although their acts are illegal, they are not earth-shattering to the avaricious companies that sell recordings. I would wager that by putting more music in the hands of more people, they are unknowingly and pragmatically supporting the industry that hates them.
Am I trying to make excuses for lawbreakers? No, not really, but sometimes the economic reality is in no way representative of the motivations. Capitalism is theoretically based on the idea that people are self-motivated, and American capitalism relies on people being downright hedonistic. Get a clue and ride the wave, RIAA!
-L
This article at Salon summarizing this message from Napster -- Napster is using DMCA as a defense! Users who were fingered by Metallica are allowed under DMCA (assuming, that is, you count napster as an ISP) to submit a counternotification is they think they were incorrectly identified as copyright infringers. Unless Metallica pursues legal action against those individuals within ten days of the receipt of the counternotification, Napster must reinstate them!
The following text is something I was writing to someone as a critique, but I wanted to post it in this forum as well. It's basically about something I as well as others have been guilty of. I haven't been acknowleging the affect of free distribution on the artists in my posts, although they have been on my mind. Anyway, here's the snippet:
This is where the biggest issue, in my opinion, comes into play. And this is where
the RIAA will do the greatest evil. What they're doing is playing on the whole
conflict between our freedom to distribute media over the Internet and their right
to control distribution. You can't have one without taking away from the other. For
example, having Napster blocked from campuses is in fact a way that the RIAA took
away our freedom to distribute and gained back some control of music distribution.
If anyone thinks they'll stop with Napster, my guess is they are wrong. The big
problem is that the more control the RIAA has over distribution, the harder it
becomes for us to do our own promotion and distribution of music. Napster was a
great distribution channel for independent artists. Indie music is bigger on
college campuses than anywhere--and now it just got a little harder for us to
get in there. We know that the distribution of MP3's has been making the recording
industry money because it helps them promote their music. The problem is that as
MP3 distribution becomes more popular people will learn how to promote and
distribute music leaving the RIAA out of the picture. When this happens they're
going to be hurting. They'll do everything they can to close down distribution
channels that create an even playing field. Let's face it, it's their job to
control the distribution of media. They're not going to give a shit about freedom
and independent artists--other than the fact that it will infringe on their profits.
If they get in the way they'll stop it. You don't have to look far to find
historical and anecdotal evidence of how much they really care about artists. I
think we're falling into a trap here though. We sound just as bad as the RIAA
because we're neglecting the artists point of view. I think this is mainly
because we've seen it as a moot point. The artists that are against free
distribution don't understand that it can't be stopped or they understand
that their music isn't good enough that people will pay them for it unless
they're promoted by a major label. I really think it's important to work on
winning them over to free distribution. I believe the artists with talent will
stand a better chance of making money through free distribution than through
a big label. Yeah, some will get picked up by major labels and make obscene
amounts of money, but most will go unnoticed without free distribution. These
are the guys that need us, and we need them.
numb
A colleague pointed me to this article on The Register - looks like there's now a napster clone specifically for finding Metallica music! Check it out: http://metallicster.freeservers.com/.
--
Everything I know in life I learnt from
that the two most noteworthy names going after Napster really had their heyday quite some time ago? Metallica: it's been a pretty steady slide since the black album. Dr. Dre: Much love for The Chronic circa 1992, but lately, he's been pretty bland.
Just a thought... probably redundant.
PDHoss
======================================
======================================
Writers get in shape by pumping irony.
This is how you unban yourself from Napster beta 6
1. You'll probably need to create a new account, so click on Start, Run, type in regedit.
2. Navigate to this key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\software\Napster. On the right side of the window after you click on the Napster folder, delete the key that says "CurrentUser". Also delete any folders below the Napster folder. (i.e. click on the plus sign and remove all those folders that have usernames.)
3. Now do a search (ctl-f) for these things one at a time:
35D38C13-1434-AB7E-003483943341AA
A1AD8C13-1383-5343-DCC38E43FF0AAE
CAD8C813-1F34-1B3E-00CEAE43FF0AAD
Delete every instance that you find of these keys. Hit F3 to continue searching. There are about 3 or 4 instances of each of these keys.
4. Reboot your system. (just in case.)
Thanks Cryptic
"Always remember that reality is merely the fuel for traversing the infinite plains of the imagination."
Apparantly, they are aware of this problem:
ian.
ian
Demo tapes with titles like "Lars Sucks Ass?"
Or "Metallica Ate My Napster".
(It's in MP3 too...)
I want to get one of those and cruise down the road blasting Dr. Dre songs I haven't paid for.
Got Rhinos?
According to today's NY Times Biggest Music Companies Settle Antitrust Case on CD Price-Fixing.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!