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MPAA Sues Scour: Will Google Be Next?
BoFiS writes: "Well it seems the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) was feeling left out of all the suing action going on between the RIAA and Napster because News.com reports that they have filed a suit against Scour for aiding in the transfer of illegal/bootleg copies of movies. The article also talks about the DivX format that many movies come in, but not much about the suit itself." Scour may raise privacy concerns, but isn't their service essentially content-agnostic?
Bah, they'd have to sue Britain for indirectly starting the US, which exists for the sole purpose of starting the internet which exists for the sole purpose of .....
-PS
"All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
What I think is trying to be said with the title is that they are companys that make tech that can be used to get "illigale" copy of copyright stuff, so google is a search engine it can be used to search for "illigale" songs, movies, software. The companys that are members of the MPAA and the like are just sue happy and if they can come up with even the stupidest resone they will use, I can imagine one of their arguments to sue google... "But you can go and search for MP3 and an artist's name and find it on google"
I think I will buy some of the "Stop the MPAA" bumper stickers for my car from 2600
Actually, that's more or less the argument Napster is going to use. Their lawyer was involved with the Justice department case against MS.
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Napster only finds things too. It doesn't transfer anything at all. It sets up a direct connection between the two members of the program, but the file never touches Napster's servers. I don't know about Scour, but I presume it works the same way.
Oh and uh, I'm the one who wrote that first reply in case you couldn't tell.
it's usually not that easy to tell one ranting idiot from the next, that's why i login.
How is it that you've decided to let the industry that controls the creation of an artifact, define the legal definition of it's use? This "piracy" shit is coming straight from their mouths, and it has only one goal. It's FUD, and you know it. I'd like you site an example where more exposure to artistic endeavors has decreased the demand for such things. You even said yourself MP3 sounds like shit. You also said that real music fans will still buy albums (and I heartily agree). So how do you defend the idea that a limitless resource should be made limited solely because the people who make money off of it think that should be so?
Even the writer of the DMCA thinks it is crap now. He had no idea how to create a viable digital marketplace and these trade industry groups knew it. So they pushed their agenda, which now seems obvious "sue every new form of competition to oblivion over the laws we wrote two years ago."
hmm?
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+&x
I feel for your friend, but no one suggested stepping in and "saving" the horse-and-buggy makers. Technology can move on, and business models sometimes -- despite all the FUD of the RIAA and MPAA -- sometimes do become obsolete.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
If Scour looses this one, we're well beyond the time for elections and judicial appeal. That would be time for guns and subversion.
"This year, it's the ballot or the bullet! The ballot or the bullet! It's either going to be the ballot or the bullet! You're going to have to choose - will it be the ballot or the bullet? The ballot or the bullet. It's going to be the ballet or the bullet." --Malcolm X
P.S. It's spelled "loses". When you use two o's, you get "loose". Thus, if I refer to you as a "loser", I am implying that you are "one who loses"; if I refer to you as "looser", I am implying that one or more of your orifices are less tight than the average heterosexual male.
Also, after careful reading, it should be clear that the parent post is not flamebait, and this is.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
No, the User Friendly strips were about a band who sued Napster (like Metallica did) - what was suggested was that RIAA could be sued.
"This lawsuit is about stealing," MPAA president Jack Valenti said in a press conference this morning. "Technology may make stealing easier, but it doesn't make it right."
That's for sure. It's about the MPAA's right to steal.
And technology may make it easier to "steal," but that does not make this lawsuit right, nor does it turn technology or search engines into burglar's tools.
As usual, news.com is virtually useless and doesn't list anything resembling what the actual cause of action is. Contributory infringement? Vicarious liability? Some provision of the DMCA? They don't tell us. Jerks.
Pretty bad news for Nasa ....
-- the most controversial site on the Web
>Hrmm, is wrongly a word?
Yep. At the very latest "Stranger in a Strange Land" would've made it a shoo in.
See that "Preview" button?
Let us not forget when Disney's legal department sued a daycare center for showing Disney animanted films to kids, claiming they didn't have a multi-thousand dollar distrobution license. (The PR department got wind of it, and very quickly granted the daycare center a free license before the legal eagles made Disney look even worse than it already did for "suing children.") I'm not sure we can even blame the MBAs running the big studios. The ones behind frivolous lawsuits are the legal departments. It doesn't matter if the MPAA's case is thrown out of court, the laywers still make a cool couple of mil' on the deal.
--GrouchoMarx
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
I'd like to point out in Clinton's defense, as much as it galls me, ICANN was created(chosen) per a presidential order. While a lot of people try to trash ICANN around here, they are a _much_ better choice than N/A or some megalithic DMV in washington...
which leads me a little off topic: I heard today that part of Gore's platform is that he'll hire 10,000 new prosecutors to disperse amongst the states, if he's elected. We all know what bored prosecutors do, they bully corporations and peasants (the only two types of American) and they are in full swing acendancy these days, with tobacco, handguns and Microsoft. While some of you may applaud the latter, how long before they set their sights on someone/something you care about?
:)Fudboy
:)Fudboy
I guess I'm only a Fudboy, looking for that real Transmeta
I've read a deposition from this guy Valenti (head of MPAA) before, and he really seems to lack a fundamental understanding of the technological status quo. Not only is he basically clueless of what's going on online, save a vague premonition that it's illegal and that he should sue, but any, and I mean any (wo)man who has traversed their way as far up the corporate ladder as he has should be astute enough to realize that the last thing to do right now is to sue.
I mean, talk about bad timing! Napster would have to rank at or near the top of the list of most covered Internet stories ever. You don't think the press isn't going to see this as a Napster analogue and just gobble it up? If there's one thing that really cemented Napster's growth, it's the fourth estate. I doubt if they would have anywhere near 20,000,000 users if Shawn Fanning wasn't on Newsweek and every newspaper and pop-culture rag in the country wrote multiple Op-Ed and news pieces on it.
And now this flaming idiot Valenti decides to sue! I really, really do feel for Scour - not because they're being sued. Ho no - I just hope that they have the bandwidth and servers to accomodate the five to ten extra million people that are going to sign on once the word "Scour" gets drag through the press just like "Napster" did a few months ago.
On one level Valenti is doing the right thing, I suppose. But come on. How stupid can you get? I would have at least waited until the Napster issue became stale with the public before throwing essentially the same lawsuit on the table again. It doesn't take a genious to tell you that Napster has benefitted from the RIAA suit far, far more than it has suffered. Even if they end up losing, they've built a brand-name that no amount of advertising could have ever hoped to achieve.
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I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
which services will the RIAA/MPAA target next?? I think clones such as mynapster and Filenavigator will suffer the heat. The RIAA never kept up with technology, and will now suffer the consequences. If anything, the all powerful Gnutella will prevail.
Actually, the RIAA is going to sue Tim Berners-Lee and Al Gore next, as they are the co-creaters of the internet.
Though what a truly find funny, is the fact that hardly anyone had ever heard of napster before the suit, now everyone know about them. Hardly anyone has heard of scour, will the same thing now happen. And why wouldn't the MPAA learn from the mistakes of the RIAA????
They go through the legal system because its all they know. Instead of being smart and figuring out the system, they rely on "the old world" way of thinking...
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Humancasting
OliverWillis.Com
An Operative with an Agenda
What we offered at Tek was a service. We encoded and classified the music, provided the playlist service, and kept track of the statistics. Like someone else said in this thread, dont shoot the messenger.
Oh, and I'm flattered you remember :)
"jeff"
umm, the market doesn't seem to think so. People (i.e. me) would much prefer to peruse pr0n from the comfort of their homes rather than some seedy cum-stained shack on the outskirts of town. You could probably blame our puritannical "won't somebody think to keep the children ignorant" roots for that, if you really wanted to.
I don't think I've ever been to a town that has a triving "red light district", but I've been there on the Net.
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+&x
The fact that you can download the music from within the scour interface is irrelevant. Music files on the internet may be copyrighted by bg labels, or they may not be. The industry has a very large share of the copyrights out there, but that doesn't mean that they should be given control over ALL music distribution.
People are copying copyrighted music out there and I think that is unethical. However, I do not believe that going after the mode of transmission is justified. The cost, which will be squashing independently recorded music forever, is simply too great.
In short, don't be trapped by the industry's mind control attempts.
How about we start suing the car companies for selling cars to armed robbers. For delivering drugs up and down our nations highways. They should really stop making cars they are used for so many illegal activities. I am suing the computer companies next for robbing me of a life. They know these things are addictive and they just keep making them. I can't even help myself. I just seems to me that all the laws that are made now are making for a lawless society!
The article states that Scour willingly removes the links of any copyright owner who requests that such a link be removed to their material. Also, Scour has made a few movie trailer/promotion deals with studios on their web site. This same studios (such as Hollywood) are now plaintiffs in this lawsuit!
The studios were apparently thinking about working with Scour for content, but instead have slammed them with a lawsuit through the MPAA. This is the wrong move, following the lead of the RIAA and Napster - it's not the way to make money. The studios want money, and few people have the bandwidth to download such movies right now - so these studios aren't losing money. IMO, it's far better from a business-stance to make deals and do movie promotions with a company like Scour - that could actually lead to some revenue. These lawsuits just lose money for everyone in legal fees.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
Disclaimer: I don't care what the tobacco companies do, but I don't want to pay for some one's self-inflicted degenerative disease.
Oh, you mean like obesity?
-- Jabber: Get the Message @ http://www.jabbercentral.com/
"Scour may raise privacy concerns" damn the LA Times.. Scour is not anymore a privacy problem then any other filesharing application out there. Don't share shit you don't want people to get, it's really not that hard.. I hate to see people hop on the media bandwagon because someone else makes a claim for a original story. As for the remark about google.. What the hell does Google and Scour have to do with one another?? -X- http://dmusic.com
-X- webmaster@xgeneration.net
With all the lawsuits around I think I need someone to sue. It is become difficult to tell if the lawsuits are actually because of losing revenue or trying to gain it in a new way.
Kate
_________________________ Visit me at http://pornforcomputers.com
I won't say they're inherently bad, but my sense is that most communities think they're something of an embarrassment and would be happier if they weren't there. If the Internet provides cheaper, more discreet pr0n to those who want it, and towns and cities get to improve their image without having to resort to draconian zoning measures (etc), then everybody wins IMHO. (Except, of course, the owners of the pr0n shops... but they can tell their sad stories to the buggy whip salesmen for all I care)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
"Well it seems the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) was feeling left out of all the suing action going on "
the mpaa isn't feeling left out of anything, they've been suing 2600 for awhile now.
Me too. It was such a drag when NetWare/IPX lost the protocol wars.
sulli
sulli
RTFJ.
It's great for classics, and I use it for such, but it's not nearly the same thing as the one true OLGA.
-bugg
although it's neutral, the second site that google found had downloadable metallica mp3s.
Heh, I don't think the reduction in the amount of business that he did was so much because of porn flicks being pirated, but because there is so goddamn much porn out there. I mean, people joke about how much porn is available, but I don't think that too many of us really think about the atrociously huge amount of porn that is available without ever leaving the house. And I'm not talking pirated porn clips, I'm talking the whole friggin bonanza of pornography out there, from still pics to clips to special interest crap to major events; on the Howard Stern Show yesterday, Howard was interviewing a dude who was going to webcast a contest where some women would attempt to out gangbang each other. To win, they had to bang more guys than any other girl in 12 hours AND had to do more than 620 guys, which was the record done by some other chick, also on the Internet. Prize for the winner? One million fucking dollars!
Internet porn is absolutely huge, there is amazingly massive quantities of it out there and you don't have to leave your house to get more porn than you'll ever be able to spank to for the rest of your life. That dude wasn't driven out of business by piracy, he was driven out by lack of interest. Who the hell is going to buy a ticket to a porn theater and get horned up when they can spend the ticket price on a subscription to a site that tailors to their specific kink and get truckloads of porn for the price of a movie. Shit, take every single pirated movie and clip off of the Internet and the guy still would have gone out of business, because there is just so goddamned much porn available that is legit.
The supply far, far, far outweighs the demand, and that dude didn't get it until it was too late; so goes business in an industry affected by changing technologies, which, to swing bizarrely back on to topic somewhat, is the same lesson that the MPAA, RIAA and every other acronym that bases their existance on physical media is having crammed violently up their asses. This doesn't make piracy right, and violators should be subject to prosecution, but lawsuits such as the MPAA vs Scour and RIAA vs Napster are a complete waste of these groups' time, as they are pissing away every dime that they spend on these stupid lawsuits rather than developing a new business model to adapt to the sudden turns that technology has taken over the past few years.
Deo
For the past few weeks, the MPAA has shown that its clue level is as low as the RIAA. The genie is out of the bottle and we're not going back. Ever.
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Humancasting
OliverWillis.Com
An Operative with an Agenda
Huh huh. Huh huh.
Huh huh. Huh huh.
I wonder when just being online is enough to be sued by the MPAA or RIA? I mean, you are on the internet, files are available, you could potentially download something they own .. Or what about being an ISP? Packets from MP3s/AVIs/MPGs are flowing through your router equipment, aiding the pirates doint their dirty deeds. Where's it going to stop?
I bet the MPAA will sue American Standard next, because clearly their products are too content-agnostic and are not doing their best to feed the MPAA's cash cow. Actually, the point is more valid than it seems, considering the parallels in what's coming out of the movie industry these days and what's being flushed down American Standard's products.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Not surprisingly, the Proskauer firm, the same one in the 2600.com case is involved, as is Judge Kaplan's old firm, Paul, Weiss. I am personally disappointed that David Kendall of Williams & Connolly represents some of the Plaintiffs. Most may know him as one of Clinton's lawyers, but I know him (personally) as a longtime and good advocate of First Amendment rights.
Yes Scour must win this one. All they do is report the response from a particular protocol from certain hosts attached to a certain network. If Scour looses this one, we're well beyond the time for elections and judicial appeal. That would be time for guns and subversion.
Certainly they demonstrated their cluebie level long ago. As with the RIAA, they don't get it, and there's no reason to expect them to become enlightened.
Technology and big agencies like this do not mix. Change only happens quickly when it's done willingly or with resignation. Agencies and businesses that stubbornly cling to their notions of how the world works won't be changing any time soon.
The only movies that the MPAA protects are the typicall Hollywood crap ones. Please! I could careless if these movies make it not. What does the MPAA provide independent film? Nothing. I've seen more awesome indie movies and shorts that I can count and now I'm activly watching indie pix on the web. Do they get the support that the MPAA offers? Hell no! Being independent means doing it your own way and not answering to a group of fat cats sitting around with marketing budgets that are hemoring money. Movies for the people by the people...
<P>
Hey, but if your happy being feed the same story line with the same actors and the same "explosions" go right ahead and see Matrix 2 when it comes out. Enjoy Star Wars Episoid Two "Electric JarJar Boogaloo." I won't be in line with you. An I sure as sh*t won't be wasting my precious bandwidth downloading DivX copies off the web.
<P>
when they ban enctryption only criminals wi$21*J *#JF$%!@#$':
to make an absurd reference to Google being an MP3 search engine?? News at 11.
If there's an open source application enabling all this file sharing, who would RIAA/MPAA go up against? Individual users? Wouldn't that be cost prohibitive? Is an open application the ultimate defense against this or do we need new legislation...
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Humancasting
OliverWillis.Com
An Operative with an Agenda
'Twas done in Chicago a long, long time ago, as well as many of the suburbs. This has got to be the cleanest area of the country. This is mostly the effect of a religiously conservative oligarch mayor who, for instance, had outdoor restaurants banned because he thought they were "unsanitary". In the burbs, well, that area IS the most politically conservative group of voters in the country. Curiously, the areas of the U.S. I find to be covered in strip bars were... pretty much any place in the Bible Belt! The more conservative the lifestyle, the more copression relief you find just outside of town.
What is next? Suing companies that sell CD-Burners and blank CD's because they can be used to pirate data? Come on people. The real thing that needs to be considered is this:
Programs like napster and scour promote use of technology. The more technology of this nature(not pirating, but easy to use and popular) that is around, the more people will become involved in technology. This means more people will become more competent with computers. It will speed up the advancement of technology, and help us all get those new toys we wanted much faster due to a greater number of people in the field(I still want a flying car or a transporter... or a lightsaber).
Software like this will, in the end, be of benefit to the whole of mankind, and such innovation should be encouraged.
-Plague
Look at it this way:
Scour is a search engine for media that has no prejudice in its results.
Google is a search engine for web pages that has no prejudice in its results.
I can search for 'windows 98 registration code' and probably find it using google
I can also search for 'metallica master of puppets' and probably find it using scour
Does this mean we sue both scour and google and take them down, leaving us with nothing to search with? I really hope not.
I semi-understand the hostility aimed at napster, but Scour is different. I have used scour to find trailers for Lord of the Rings, and X-Men for instance... Shown it to my friends, in turn making them want to see those movies... But who knows... maybe we should all just give in to this censorship...
most MP3s contain music that has not been licensed by the website/scour/napster publisher. However, this is the publisher's responsibility. If I go to my favorite radio station's website and listen to their Real Audio stream, it's their responsibility to actually license that music. The same goes for MP3s. Storing those MP3s for personal use is fair use. Any service that facilitates making copies of MP3s from any source at all facilitates making fair use copies, since it is not the end-user's responsibility to license that music, it's the publisher's!
And even if cases in which music that is offered without being licensed also invalidates the fair-use component of copying and/or storing the music, prohibiting an copy-making service will also harm our rights in the cases where the music is licensed. In other words, prohibiting services such as scour, napster, and eventually lycos' mp3 search, irc, http etc. is patently an overbroad measure.
In conclusion; prohibiting products or services that enable copying harm the individual's right to fair-use, harms the progress of the arts, constitutes an overbroad measure by any stretch of the imagination, and IMNSHO has no basis in law.
You might as well prohibit CD-Rs and FedEx. Or pens. Hey, how about a tax on paper so only decent upstanding members of society can afford to print newspapers?
--
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
I have used Napster and Macster and the music I have downloaded has gotten me to buy the cd. You may thonk that I am only one out of many users but take a look at this article
from cnet.com. It looks as though there is proof that the use of these online music sources does indeed lead to people buying the music.
MUHAHAHAHAHAHA
-- Dave
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
Interesting - I should get into a victimised frame of mind and start making money, because the court case against OJ caused Friends to be rescheduled, which meant I couldn't watch it, which caused psychological damage and clinical depression - how much money am I looking at in damages?
I hope you're right, but I'm unsure whether the courts would be willing to create a situation in which bringing a case to court in itself could lead to exposure to damages. Or is that what countersuits are all about? Sorry, my legal knowledge isn't up to this!
Salocin.com
After all, those little programs are probably the biggest culprits in illegal software and file exchange. You know why don't we just go back to live performances and stop "recording" things. That would ensure that people have to pay... Boy this whole thing really chaps my hide. I hope some sort of frivolous lawsuit law applies here.
<SIG>
I think I lost my work ethic while surfing the web. If you find it, please email it to crispy@crotch.caltech.edu.
</SIG>
My sig has a broken link in it.
Odd that you should mention that: landlords can get in trouble over their tenants' crimes.
There's a piece of legislation here in the UK (and not all the tea in Burnley would induce me to remember an actual citation) to the effect that any landlord who permits premises to be used for the purpose of the consumption of any of a short list of illegal substances is liable to some smallish penalty.
Given the current state of play in the War on Some Drugs, I would be very surprised to the point of actual amazement if there wasn't something comparable in every single US jurisdiction, Oz, Canada and indeed just about everywhere you can get away with refusing service to people lacking shirt or shoes.
Back to the subject under discussion: the logic is that where the landlord has control over his tenants' use of the premises (and most leases contain clauses that provide at least some restrictions on use) he is in a position to either throw the tenant out or at least inform on the druggies.
The logic of this action is that as Scour has at least some control (or the means to exercise control, whether or not they do exercise it) over what happens on their site, they can be held accountable for what they fail to prevent.
Your mileage may vary as to whether that's a good thing in these particular circumstances.
-- AndrewD
A Maze of Twisty Little Laws, All Different.
Amen! When OLGA was shut down, I was still in junior high school - and I still remember what it said in the FAQ:
"What can I do to help?"
We make quarterly backups of our entire content. Please download them and hold onto them. Wait until the time is right and we can resurface.
Those archives are still sitting on my old 486DX/33 - I wonder if the HD has decayed by now.
Can your IM do this?
Ah, fair enough then. I can understand that, though I think there is a place for both free internet pr0n and a real life sex shop.
I was deeply saddened when OLGA shut down.
I wonder if MPAA and RIAA will go so far as to sue the power companies since they provide the power to the equipment with which these 'pirate' copies are made? Or, they could sue the connection providers for the various sites (and our ISPs) for providing the media for which the copies to be transmitted through.
Sorry, just a little sarcasm to brighten up the day.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.-Franklin
I think the saddest thing, in this case, though, was that there were well-organized, well-attended protests in favor of leaving the strip clubs alone and they didn't seem to have any effect whatsoever on the Mayor or City Council. Though I think it shook them up a little when such a large number of people showed up, they didn't back down. When you add in recent free speech decisions by the Supreme Court (which have been a mixed bag, but mostly negative) I'd say the porn store this guys friend was running would have more trouble than just freely available Internet porn.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
If this is really happening, I'm really sorry for your friend and all the other people in the world who derive their income from obselete froms of information distribution.
The world is changing. It is obvious that many people would rather get their porn/music/movies/whatever over the net than in physical form, many would argue that this is a long term trend. Of course there are IP issues to sort out in this new environment and they will get sorted out, one way or another, and we will move on.
Your basis for supporting the MPAA is about as solid as the tobacco companies crying, "but what about our employees?" as if keeping a few thousand people employed in a stangant industry was appropriate compensation for massive health care bills.
Disclaimer: I don't care what the tobacco companies do, but I don't want to pay for some one's self-inflicted degenerative disease.
Disclaimer: I hate all forms of IP and think the world would be a better place with no IP or significantly less. Given the mass of capital invested in IP these days I think it's unlikely I'll see its abolishment in my time, but I feel it's important to fight when IP rights are being extended & entrenched.
Slashdot is often mistaken for an advocacy site.
It started as a website for news that intrests CmdrTaco. Thats all it ever has been or will be.
Thats good in a way... It means the Slashdot editors accually know and understand what they are posting.
There isn't a single legal expert amoung the Slashdot editors... so don't expect legal news...
I don't actually exist.
Unethical, vs. immoral, inappropriate, illegal, etc.
Notice that something can be unethical, and I can still not give a wet slap about it.
If this confuses you, go buy a decent dictionary.
Yeah, they are full movies, but look at the quality. They're for the most part 60MB asf's. No one in their right mind would watch Gladiator in that format over seeing it in their theater or buying the VHS/DVD. At most, they'll get it so they'll have something to own before the DVD comes out.
--
Dyolf Knip
My other first post is car post.
Scour is actually a bit different. They make you download a little program that works with their website to actually download the content. Basically if you want to download you have to do it through their program.
The thing that I wonder is why is everyone of these major organizations jumping to the legal system as their primary means of problem resolution?
What other recourse do they have? Sending emails kindly asking people to stop? Or sending BIG guys in trenchcoats to peoples houses?
Right now, the law is written so that what most of these services are providing is illegal. That's that. There doesn't need to be any kindness towards people breaking the law. That may change however, as these cases go through the legal system, but right now with the law on their side, why wouldn't they want to jump into the legal system?
- Search for Linux
- Click on Show matches (Cache) for ww.linux.com
- Look at the Linux.com logo that comes up on that page. Look at the source, or even just go to "View Image" in the image's context menu (in Netscape).
In other words, Google does not cache images. They do however modify the HTML, so that (provided the images are still there) the images will show up in the cached page. This is similar to the way mediators (like this one) will often still show the correct images, but the images aren't going through their server. Your browser is still getting it from the original source.The URL is: http://198.186.203.57/i mg/template/linux.com-dropscreen.gif
Incidently, that's why when a site gets removed from the original server, but is still in Google's cache, the images are often busted in the cached page.
Lawyers ain't cheap. Seems like darned expensive advertising to me.
Everyone chasing a silver ball, violence on motorcycles, and more!
If this continues, any package containing illegal material will force UPS, FedEx (my God, even USPS) to be closed down or sued. This would require that anybody transporting any content would have to inspect it to prove it was not contraband.
"Hey, before you know it, you won't have to worry about freedom anymore. Then just sit back and enjoy Jerry Springer."
What you're describing is called "competition". The porn store has run up against somebody or something else, that can do the same, better. There is no "right to stay in business" when faced with a superior competitor, but that's basically what this store and the RIAA, MPAA etc want: a government mandate to force you, at legal gunpoint, to do it the bad old way.
What's the harm and/or difficulty they (and Metallica, as it were) have with people who own copies of the media that want to share it with other owners?
I understand issues of "digital quality", but what's the real problem with that?
I still think that more than a couple of the 300,000 Metallica fans rightfully owned their own copies of the CDs already.
A little off topic, but this should be of interest to some.
Hosting a website on a Linux box running on an SDSL connection is the cheap way to go, for around $275 you get 1.1mbps (best deal in the present area) and unlimited traffic. This is critical when you run an independent site which transfers large amounts of data (75GB monthly).
In steps Scour, unfortunately they index your site and suddenly a mass of people are downloading mpegs (and only mpegs) from you. Nobody is actually visiting you, nor reading your content, and that normally smooth 1.1mbps connection is choking.
At the time there was no automated way to easily remove the site from Scour, nor could I find what the Scour robot was named. Most search engines' robots are listed on one FAQ or another, so it's easy to set your robots.txt file for them not to index your site. You end up shooting them a frantic email asking to be removed ASAP (since you're experiencing a DDOS for all purposes) and parsing through your server log to try and find that pesky robot's name.
The heart of the matter is that while Scour may be one stop shopping for everyone it's a hidden pitfall for websites - people download anything you have up, but never actually visit your page or make an impression on that ad counter.
Here is a FAQ on search engine robots for those interested. The name of Scour.net's robot is: "SCOUR"
Andrew Borntreger
Andrew Borntreger
Champion of cinematic disasters
Now, I'm not drawing size comparisions with Napster, but you must remember that it's not just size that matters, but how it's actually used.
My friend's theater dropped over the months in clients, and now about only 2-3 people per day come, as opposed to about 50 or so from last year.
You've been watching too much porn, you've unconciously (I hope) worked in some really lame sexual jokes.
I think that's great!
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
I cared. I cared alot. I harrassed the HFA for months after that.
:)
I'm with you on this one
Finkployd
Actually, it seems possible to me that they're trying to overturn the Betamax ruling. If they can get win enough of these cases against service providers (as opposed to those actually breaking the laws in question), it might overweigh that decision, which is definitely not in their favour. I don't know much about legal precident laws, but is this possible?
-RickHunter
I know the movie industry could never collapse like that, but perhaps the events I have seen with my friend in the adult entertainment industry are harbingers of what may happen to your local video store owner as movie piracy becomes large-scale.
What local video store owner? I have to drive twenty minutes before I get to a video store that isn't Blockbuster. And if you think that homogenization doesn't have anything to do with piracy, then you're sadly mistaken.
Jonathan David Pearce
Jonathan Pearce jonathan@pearce.name
3EAAFB2A http://www.jonathan.pearce.name/
Fuck that, mod it up. He speaks the truth.
I wonder how many of the geeks out there realize that there may come a time when our 'democratic' governments and the many benevolent megacorps who enjoy VIP status (since after all they drive the thriving economy) actually start to totally fuck us all, when all of a sudden email & fax campaigns to your local puppets aren't saving your freedoms from the chopping block. That time seems very close.
If it suddenly becomes MUCH more serious that just an intellectual exercise, something more than just a 'the evil Man' story that we all sit at our puters and rant (or make cool above-it-all pronouncements and assessments) about, what are YOU going to do?
When totally bullshit legal precedents start being set in favour of the corps and their so-called 'intellectual property', and when laws are made to essentially enforce our roles as good consumers, damnit it IS time for the guns and the subversion. Sorry, going to the polls every x years and sending letters to your representative does not a democracy make.
You can all sit up in ivory tower land and continue to make your pronouncements and observations. but some of us believe in real democracy, in a world where there is a conscious demos. an open and civil society where the people decide for themselves, and elites DO NOT EXIST. Geeks could and should do something more than bitch and send letters to bring that world into being. The whole framework of our governance is utterly corrupted beyond repair; you cannot fix this system though the system!
Stop being cooly cynical about protest and start fighting them back, hard. Start facing up.
free@sdf.lonestar.org
Sometimes what somebody does or wants to do is no longer valuable in the marketplace. If they want to get payed, they must do something else. It's really simple. It doesn't make the MPAA right for all their heavy-handed dealings and legal manipulations. Data is inherently copyable. The same arguments resonate incessantly... it's not stealing from artists or store owners or suits or anybody else because there is no physical product. It is a binary copy with no production costs. The copy doesn't degrade or devalue the original. It's a different world. Scouring or Napstering mp3s is not even close to stealing a tv from the local Good Guys... no matter how much they tell you it is. Think about what theft is. Maybe there was a market for digital media distribution before. That doensn't mean there always should be. People get hurt when they lose jobs or perceived income which they thought was owed to them. They'll get over it and they'll lern (just as we all are having to do) how to cope with the reality of an entirely connected world. Don't believe what they tell you and don't take everything at face value. TTFN.
-PipTigger
At least it is nice to see that these llama oranizations decided to pick a decent file sharing application to give free publicity too!
Here's a spark of ingenuity to combat the ongoing struggle between big media corporations and innovative college coders.
Unplug. World wide. That ought to do it. Hell, while were at it, throw away the walkmans, stereos, and tvs. Might as well tear down the movie theaters too. (just to be sure) Then we sit around and act like neanderthals for about a decade, then regroup and plug back in.
If all else fails, assume jedi imposing stance:
Any media is free media.
Any media is free media.
----
Mp3's first and only use was piracy. I don't care who you are, what you do, groups (and I mean real release groups, ok? not your fucking sister's cousin, I'm talking EGO, KSI, RNS, etc) release shit for one purpose, piracy. Sure, maybe after you listen to the mp3's, you'll think wow, i wanna get this. But that's not the point, the point is piracy. Even if the mp3 algo wasn't a tool for piracy when it was made, that's what it's being used for.
The same with divx, ok? It wasn't coded to be a new standard for web video, it's a god damn piracy codec. The whole point of divx is to take a dvd, rip it, and encode it to retain quality, and have a small file size.
Now I understand all your stupid idiots who think music should be free, or should be online, and blah blah blah, but that's all bullshit. Mp3 sounds fine if you know you're not paying for it, but let's face it, even a 192kbps mp3 encoded with HQ with fraun doesn't sound that great when you compare it directly with the source.
So what, you ask, is my point here? Well it's very simple indeed, this is all god damn piracy - don't even try to attack me on this cuz I'm from the damn scene, and you're not - it's not legit. Napster is not for indie artists, it's to rip off popular bands, because that's what people have. And another thing on that, napster sucks, ok? Real mp3 people don't use that crap, napster's for the average joe who encoded his new britney spears cd with the xing codec, then you get all these idiots who download that off him, and it just gets around. Most of the time it's crap, it skips, it sucks.
If you want to use mp3 for something better, like selling albums online, sure, go ahead, who's gonna stop you? I think it's a fairly good idea, aside from the fact that you don't actually own something physical, and you have no idea who encoded it with what, and if they know what they're doing. But hey, that's not the point.
My real point here is, get over all this digital stuff, people like the fact that they can hold a bunch of mp3's on their drives, and listen to them for days on end, and for that they'll ignore the fact that the quality sucks. True audiophiles will never listen to 128kbps mp3's, and that's just reality, they'll keep on buying cd's.
And so we move on to this movie stuff. Guess what? a cam/telesync/screener is still just a vcd, it's shit quality, because the source is shit quality, and the compression crushes the damn thing to crap. Sure, I watch vcd's, but that's because I'm a cheap bastard who refuses to pay $10 to see some piece of crap like The Patriot. If I like a film, I'll buy it, it's that simple.
Now in defense of this whole movement you people have that you don't call piracy even though it is, the MPAA never lost a dime with me, you know why? Because I never would've paid to see all those stupid movies, the movies i really want to see, I buy or rent them. Same goes to mp3's, I never would buy all this pop crap that comes out, so there's not a penny lost there either.
Go ahead and moderate me down, flame me, whatever, I don't care.
Google doesn't link directly to copyrighted files such as movies or mp3s. Even if there was a link, how long would it stay up?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
When a service that's of value to the "average slashdot user" is endangered, we'll see like six articles with updates, and interviews with the agency trying to shut them down. But when the little guy is actually getting screwed when they really aren't doing anything wrong, it gets shrugged off because it doesn't affect you people.
Scour may or may not be operating in the legal limits of the laws, but one can certainly see how it's service is questionable. But the precent (not a legal precedent, it's never been to court) set by OLGA scares me. It really, really does.
OLGA used to hold about 33,000 files. Now it holds about 1,500.
-bugg
What a load of crap.
It's even funnier regarding the fact that while the MPAA is raising a big fuss about anything from DeCSS to napster they don't seem to be concerned at all about the fact that a big market for DVDmachines (as in cranking out one every few seconds) is in China, now i don't know all those famous Chinese movies ...
So when the MPAA starts lawsuits because of someone linking to the DeCSS tools why don't they try to sue those who sell DVDmachines to countries where american copyright isn't enforcable at all? I'd really love to see the MPAA answer that one, backed up with some numbers of DVDmachines sold to China versus legal DVD's being produced there.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
IIRC Scour uses SMB (and a couple other protocols) to transfer the files between computers. It's been a while since I've used Scour so I could be wrong. Now if Scour loses this, would this not make Windows illegal also seeing as how they are using the same protocol for file sharing? I propose we set up a "Network Neighbourhood" over the Internet using Windows (and I guess Linux users could use Samba) to transfer Movies and MP3's. That way when the MPAA and RIAA get wind of this happening it'll be Microsoft they'll have to sue since they created the product. Since Microsoft has the money to fight back maybe the MPAA and RIAA will finally figure out that they are not suing the right people.
Your friend's store probably failed because if didn't adapt to the marketplace. I frequent an "independent" video store that's managed to stay open in the face of Blockbuster and Hollywood Video very easily -- they adapted. Laserdisc? They carry it. DVD? From day one.
No one's decided to sue all the nntp admins out there for carrying groups like alt.binaries.mp3, alt.music.mp3, alt.binaries.vcd, etc. Seems like at any given time of any day I can simply pull up pan on my linux box and download up to several hundred mp3's. C'mon, let's be consistent... if they gonna sue everybody, let's sue everybody!!
Eggplant
Hate to break it to you, but they may have a singular antecedant. So says my dictionary. It's also great for getting out of those circumstances where the gender of the singular antecedent is inspecific. Rather than saying "he" or "she" or "he/she" or "she/he" or "sie" or whatever's in vogue with the P.C. crowd, you can simply say "they" and offend no one. (Except, possibly, grammarians whose grammar sense doesn't evolve with the language.)
Specifically, in Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition, the entry for they states, under sense 3:
Therefore, the author you were replying to was consistently referring to the MPAA in the singular sense.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
> there is also an interview with hillary rosen on news.com where she specifically says that they are not just randomly suing people.
Actions speek louder than words...
Google is a smart search that cuts out garbage using it's own logic...
Score uses a compleatly diffrent logic that leads it to link directly to MP3s....
Same results however... you wanted MP3s.. you got MP3s...
Just like AltaVista...
Only Score and Google give you lagit sources... AltaVista sends you to pirate websites...
Yes score makes a GREAT piracy tool... so dose Napster... so dose copy on dos... and hard disks... and CD burnners....
Sue Sony, HP, IBM, Microsoft, and basicly the whole consumer hardware industry...
hay sue the music industry too for setting "set to pirate" standards....
It just so happends... and yes... it's at random...
Is this invalid?
Hay... Maybe score is ignoring someones Robot.txt... that changes things quite a bit
I don't actually exist.
My point, which I didn't make very well, was that the original poster's statement:
Scour willingly removes the links of any copyright owner who requests that such a link be removed to their material.
did little to convince me that Scour has any respect for others' copyrights. The fact is that Scour links to material that they know full well violates copyright and then try to look like good guys by claiming that they will gladly remove the link if the copyright owner ever finds out about it and goes to the trouble of informing them.
This is sort of like those warez sites that have a disclaimer about how they don't host any of the files and the links to cracked programs are provided only for educational purposes. Does anybody actually believe that? Probably the same people who think Napster is all about trying music before buying it.
--
"I have a good idea why it's hard to verify programs. They're usually wrong." --Manuel Blum, FOCS 94
This is something I've wondered for a while about recording companies' wierd file-first-and-ask-questions-later policy:
my.mp3.com... At least they try to limit content access to at least those who have had a real physical duplicate of the album at some point.
But, yet, they get sued by record companies. The solid basis of the record companies case: The copies that the users are accessing are not copies of the cds they purchased, but of copies from another source. In other words, their case is based on a technicalty. But, likely a solid one.
Why, though? If record companies kill my.mp3.com and verifier-controlled services like it, then all the users will move over to unchecked storage sites like myplay.com and distributed file sharing systems like napster, gnutella, freenet, etc., all (or at least most if indexing is contributory infringement) of which are protected by the betamax ruling, because they have one or more significant legitimate uses. Are they really that short-sighted?
"It doesn't matter that the techonology pre-dates the file format by more than 20 years! Unless we control the transmissions and can make more money off of it, it shouldn't be allowed!"
Meanwhile rumours of merger between Microsoft and Time-Warner-AOL-PacBell-Sony-Perdue-Disney-Ford-Sa ab continue. The MPAA expressed support for the merger since it will "keep the control of information in the hands of responsible corporations who will know how to use it wisely."
(Yes, this is fictitious. Yes, it's sarcasm. No, I have not stolen from the breakfast tables of millions of Europeans.)
Anyway, this decentralization of distribution is a scary thing for the big-ticket content providers - it not only makes piracy more feasible, it also makes competition more feasible. Independent media creators now have a greater opportunity to distribute outside the mainstream channels, and this is problematic for MPAA/RIAA etc... These groups consistently try to control distribution in ways that assume/ensure that they are "the only game in town." Remember MPAA's proposed surcharge on blank video tapes a few years back, to reimburse them for revenues lost to piracy? Was any of that surcharge to be distributed to independent videomakers?
The point to bear in mind when discussing the squelching of technologies/services that appear to foster piracy, is that these same services/technologies also foster distribution of alternative/independent content. To "shoot the messenger" as its been referred to here, is to censor independent distribution, not just distribution of pirated mainstream content.
A: I'm not sure. I'm just not sure.
Now what I want to know is: why is he suing? how does he know who to sue? Did his laywers tell him to sue? Any thoughts?
Wow, that jerky little 5inch window is pretty damn valuable, compared to the big screen, surround sound, full immersion experience you get for a lousy $[5-9] at the theatre! Appearently they (over)estimate each download is going to cost at least 15,000 ticket buyers or 75,000 video rentals. Amazing.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Well now, first you say mp3s are about piracy, that true audiophiles don't listen to them, then you say you watch vcds cuz you're a cheap bastard. What makes that different from the teenyboppers who would rather spend their allowance on weed than the new Matchbox 20 CD? I do agree that most of what's being traded online is shite, and you know what? That gives me hope. Wouldn't it be great if Brittney and NSync et al lost money and fell victim to mp3s?! Oh wait, no, they're richer than ever. Piracy or not, ethical or not, record sales are UP. Well, record sales of mainstream bubble gum crap are up. I guess I'll just shiver in a corner with my Pixies tapes and wait the whole mess out...
As for movies, global broadband access ain't here yet. I know I wouldn't sit through a 5 hour download for another Julia Roberts disaster...and watching it on my monitor? Ack.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
The problem here (as I see it) is that we have two arguments, and whilst each one on it's own is very valid and not *that* threatening in itself to these four-letter institutions, when you put the two together, they have every reason to be righteously pissed.
1) We have a right to privacy, I don't want a unique ID on my Pentium III, Doubleclick extrapolating my browsing habits to figure out my preferred colour of underwear or anybody anywhere figuring out character traits of mine by following what I do on the internet. - Fine.
2) We have a right to "fair use" and to exchange whatever files we choose to exchange, and nobody has the right to gag the medium we use to do that, be it called Napster, Scour, Gnutella or an envelope and a stamp. - Fine.
Put those two together and you have a situation in which people are going to copy stuff that they're allowed to copy, and make it available to other people, who will then download it in an environment that we are protecting so jealously that there is no way to police it, and that leads to potentially huge losses in revenue to the companies represented by these institutions.
Why? Because when people think they can't get caught, many of them quite happily do whatever they want, be it legal, moral, or not.
We sit here complaining about the MPAA and RIAA or whatever they're called, and protecting our medium's existence and privacy, but never offer them any viable solutions. Until someone bridges that gap and thinks of a solution, this problem isn't going to go away and the media companies will continue to try to gag what they perceive as a medium that facilitates the unlawful exchange of their product. Maybe we should try to come up with a solution to *their* problem instead of always just trying to slow them down. If we want them to go in another direction, lets open one up for them rather than just trying to close off the options that they have. What else can they do to protect the revenue flows they are entitled to arising from the goods they sell.
Now I'm no better than anyone else, because I don't want them treading all over my privacy or the tools for information exchange that exist on the internet, but I haven't got a solution for them either - I just think that that direction is more likely to succeed than the protection of a medium that is obviously being used to exchange pirated music and in vast volumes.
PS. On a related note - to say that "they make so much money that they had it coming to them" is economically rubbish. How much money they make is irrelevant. If you think the music costs too much, don't listen to it, in the same way that if you think a car costs too much, you don't buy it. You don't steal that car and then justify yourself by saying that it was overpriced in the first place.
Salocin.com
[A porno store went out of business due to pr0n being freely available on the Internet]
And this is a bad thing?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Hmm. It isn't still done like that? That was actually pretty nifty. If you copied the IP into the Location bar on My Computer in W98 in the form \\127.0.0.1\, you could view other files on their drive. That is, if they didn't disable that. You could probably even change their startup screen if you wanted to. It wouldn't hurt anything, but it would certainly freak them out.
------------
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
The internet was never really made for security. Yes things can be "made secure"
but most time it is not. What this case is about is the fact technology can be
used for things these companies don't like for people to do. Insteed of using
technology (DVD better encryption) to protect themself they are turning to
the law. Now are the users of Scour doing something illegal maybe (fair use)
the question is who should pay the people doing the illegal action or the people
providing the technology to allows the people to do the iilegal action. If someone
wrote a book how to steal a car. If a thief bought it and stoled your car using the
instruction of the book. Who do you sue the maker of the book or the thief?
Same idea. In the article they mentioned the Decss as tool for copy DVD I can
other programs for copy DVD movies. And the movies named in the article are
movies that are not on DVD. I thought that was funny.
Years ago that little program you are talking about never transfered files through the Scour's servers at all. When Scour was used, SMB sharing was popular but most people didn't know how to get to SMB sites with Win95/98 that were outside of the local browsing network. You can always get the file directly from the providers computer though with NT or smbclient. The scour program just makes that easier by dealing with the SMB stuff for you, along with whatever other types of protocol the files could be downloaded from (HTTP and FTP).
Firstly, as another poster states, Napster and Scour also only point you at the locations of files, and don't actually have the files. They are more like the Geocities pages with links to Warez FTP sites or doing a Google search for "Warez", than the Warez FTP sites themselves.
Secondly, if anything by the standards being applied in these court cases Google is more infringing than Napster/Scour, as Google caches local copies of potentially copyrighted material.
tangent - art and creation are a higher purpose
postmoderncore - art and creation are a higher purpose
As far as I remember, scour is just a search engine for media software (mp3s, videos, pictures). Google is a search engine for finding webpages as well as media. Google is primarily for webpages and such. The topic "MPAA Sues Scoure: Will Google Be Next?" is wrongly worded. Hrmm, is wrongly a word?
-PovRayMan
----------
Check out my blackbox styles
Meglocorp VP Gasp! How are they doing it?
Meglocorp Peon They are using advanced search engines that link files on personal computers!
Meglocorp VP Gasp! We are loosing millions! People will go broke! Homeless and Starve to death!
Meglocorp Peon We should SUE them!
Meglocorp VP Ok, Who do we sue?
Meglocorp Peon Ok, how about Excite?
Meglocorp VP Nonono, We own that company..
Meglocorp Peon How about Lycos?
Meglocorp VP Oh nonono, our sister company owns them...
Meglocorp Peon Humm, Yahoo?
Meglocorp VP Nope, too big...
Meglocorp Peon Hey, what about Scour.net...
After long lawsuit, and Scour.net looses...
Meglocorp VP I have this idea of allowing people to share files on the internet, and we charge each customer per transaction!
Meglocorp Peon Wow, Brilliant boss...
As much as I want large, firm rights and hard freedom on the net, and as much as I am disgusted by those big, solid corporate conglomerates, I am afraid I must side with the MPAA based on past experience. Let me probe deeper into the situation.
One of my friends was the head of a theater and movie rental store that specialized in adult entertainment and movies (don't make jokes, just read on). Unfortunately he recently had to pull out of the market after his sales had dropped significantly from since last year(the year broadband connections dramatically increased along the country).
Using common screen capture devices along with VCR's, (then later DVD's as the tech progressed), pirates began trading clips, then eventually full adult movies over usenet and irc and ftp, not to mention the new arrival of gnutella, freenet, and scour's client. Now, I'm not drawing size comparisions with Napster, but you must remember that it's not just size that matters, but how it's actually used. Many Napster users actually buy the CD's they pirate. But with the stigma attached to adult entertainment, such films get pirated big time anonymously as people would rather not be seen buying erotic films. My friend's theater dropped over the months in clients, and now about only 2-3 people per day come, as opposed to about 50 or so from last year. He asked a few of his few remaining regulars why sales were dropping so much, and the usual reply he got was, "It's easy to get porn for free anonymously on the net" When he was about to close down, he showed me his business log, reporting that his yearly sales had fallen by 31% from the year before. Because of that, he decided to withdraw from his store and went to look for another job.
I know Slashdot people object to the term piracy, but it definitely hurts others, be it artists, store-owners, or corporate suits. I know the movie industry could never collapse like that, but perhaps the events I have seen with my friend in the adult entertainment industry are harbingers of what may happen to your local video store owner as movie piracy becomes large-scale. I dislike the MPAA, but I think they have a duty to protect everyone in the movie business from potential damage. I hate to say this, but good luck in your suit, MPAA.
"The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries."
"The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries."
- Marquis De Sade
Scour is a database of text. Their database contains no copyrighted material.
ugh.
--
A mind is a terrible thing to taste.
"A mind is a terrible thing to taste."
60 meg is quite conservative for an asf, most movies are split into two 120 meg parts. If you want slightly higher quality theres always raw mpegs which two 600 meg parts. Perfect for burning to a VCD. When you play a good quality asf at fullscreen and sit back like a tv its better than being at the movies.
Its not the point of "no one will watch that" because people obviously do or it wouldn't exist. Its the point of that it does exist and its illegal.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
And links are not a breach of copyright.
Not to give them any ideas, but who are they going to sue next? From their standpoint, I would think the obvious step would be suing the major Usenet providors that all the small ones get their feeds from. Then they can just abolish alt.binaries.*. Yeah, that would be a good idea. If they got rid of a.b.*, that would make the internet faster, cuz of all the newsservers constantly talking to each other, pushing these huge files all over the place, and all the people downloading them... The repurcussions stack up...
Anyway, the problem with this, is that if any single one of these lawsuits wins, and the judges don't narrow down the reason to a tiny specific instance, it's going to open up lawsuits aimed at any content providor that provides a substantial amount of immoral or illegal data. Such as abolishing FTP access to any server that does not use port 21, cuz 'only' the warez servers change it to something else. The internet was designed on the concept of providing content, whatever content that may be is immaterial. These lawsuits are ridiculous, and if any of them win, it would create a precedent that could seriously impair the whole of the internet for years to come. Baaaaaad, baaaaad lawyer. No cookie.
A: (Mr. Valenti) How do you spell it?
Why does Valenti ask this?
Yes it is, but what are you going to do about it? You're going to absolutely nothing, because you can't do anything about it.
Except buying my blank CD:s and MD:s from abroad (which I do), or trying to run for a seat in the parliament (which still wouldn't give me real power to change anything), nothing.
organization advocating the legalization of cannabis was refused the status of a registered non-profit organization
Somehow, that doesn't surprise me at all. Finland and the Finnish people has been conditioned to fear drugs so much that even a proposition to think about the stuff is met with something approaching loathing. On the same note, most Finns are content in the current status that the Government tells us what is a "safe" percentage of alcohol in strong drinks (anything over 60% (I think) is treated as a drug).
who should be silenced at once
The silencing is actually quite efficient. If you keep enough noise so that somebody in the media will notice you, after you get your comments on paper / radio / TV, the government (or some other group) produces an "expert" to ridicule your opinions or, if that is not enough, then s/he reminds you (and the people) of the horrors of where Finland would be in a few years if the notion you were advocating would be implemented. Not nice at all.
challenging the existing laws and advocating change was deemed as unacceptable conduct
That is also something I have noticed. The bad thing is that the "conditioning" is so efficient that most of the time, the government etc. don't even have to do anything, the people will silence you (by silently or not so silently ridiculing you.)
Well, maybe someday even I will find a country which doesn't offend me.. Or maybe I should just shut up and be content with what I have (not!).
As a general tip, it is unwise to strip powered cables using one's teeth.
Isn't it odd that Microsoft is listed as a contributor to the MPAA's legal trust?
How can they feel left out? This is madness!
All this media suing that's going on is gonna die down very soon when everyone who hasn't yet realized the fact that all they want is free advertising realises that very key point. They all know that the suing isn't going to get them anywhere, but it is free advertising.
-- http://thegirlorthecar.com funny dating game for guys
Jungle music is one area where I think mp3 is really helping. Kinda the pirate radio of today. Really, the cost per track of stuff on vinyl is much higher than CD, so being able to check out a preview before you buy can really help. It's not really going to kill record sales either, because the ones who were going to buy records are still going to buy records; not too many people DJ mp3's seriously.
I just had to point out, anyway, that not all "real" ripping groups are doing it solely for the piracy.
Hmmm. Perhaps a new tactic is needed. I think friends of Napster/Scour/etc should find some starving new artists that are using these services to spread their music. Then, if/when they are shut down, the artists can claim harm was done to them by the RIAA et all. I'm not a lawyer, but it sounds to me like they could make a decent case-- that by shutting down all music distribution, they were hurting people using it for honest work. The RIAA definitely has deep pockets for a potential plaintiff.
Some explanation of the "Will Google be next?" bit would be nice. How is Google like Scour or Napster? It seems like it would be more appropriate to say "Will IRC/FTPD/HTTPD be next?", since these are things that can actually be used for "file sharing". Google only finds stuff. It isn't involved in the transfer.
They should sue MS because it's (mostly) their operating system that allows access to these copyrighted materials! I mean, they even have a way of saving files onto a thing called a hard drive, not to mention the media player which allows users to view them.
the RIAA is targeting companies that make a point to offer copyrighted music. there is also an interview with hillary rosen on news.com where she specifically says that they are not just randomly suing people.
in short, the assertion that they will be going after google is goddamned stupid.
a search for mettalica mp3z on scour looks like this, whereas one on google gives you this.
you can download the mp3z directly from within the scour 'interface.' that is NOT neutral.
have a nice day.
--
blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
gnapster, gnutella, freenet...whatever. we have the means to subvert the major labels but not the control over them. All of this is about who controls the means of distribution. Labels are scared because the people are gaining control of what they what to listen/watch and the programs they want to do this with. Profits drop when companies cannot control what people react to. This is a means of control that the people still control but that corporations are desperate to dominate.
You gotta rub me the right way!
~christina aguilera.
I'm missing the connection between scour.net and google? I understand how scour could have a finger/lawsuit be pointed at it (although I do hope that the suit is dismissed) but isn't google just a pretty damn good search engine? (or is there some other feature i should be exploiting, er.. uh. using =) Enrico
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
These are live (bootleg concert) recordings, which Metallica gives permission to share, while scour's results include tracks off the albums. When people link to web sites where illegal mp3s are available for download, it only gets them noticed that much quicker by the authorities & taken down.
The real story is right at 2600.
Man, doesn't anybody here read 2600? they've been involved & covering this for months.
Ace
First, the standard disclaimer: I live in Canada. There, now that that's out of the way, it seems to me that the United States lawyers are trying really, really hard to turn the internet into a police state, sans police. The companies and organizations that hire the lawyers get so bent on protecting their own interests, paranoid about 'piracy' (a term which has surpassed buzzword status and is now utterly meaningless except as a newspeak-esque blanket accusation) of their 'intellectual property' (likewise) that they are willing to do irrational and potentially self destructive things to protect said IP. And now, with the lawyers firmly involved, a lot of bad laws designed to facilitate corporate control of the internet are being passed -- primarily DMCA and UCITA, at present. And you know what? As far as I can tell, there's sweet fuck all you can do about it. You can't really vote for someone who will make a change because you're voting for a figurehead -- I have yet to see Bill Clinton make one intelligent comment on United States policy that got implemented into law at any time. He seems to just run around waving at foreign diplomats. Canada's better, in my view, but not much. While we don't have corporate control to nearly that extent, our government is so locked in battle with itself that nothing effective gets done. One province (Quebec)'s leaders are convinced that remiving their entire province from Canada is the only way to protect their culture because they're unwilling to change -- but the people in Quebec, when polled in a referendum, can't decide whether to leave or not. (The last referendum turned up 49.1% yes, 50.9% no, and we're all positive that there'll be another one as soon as they can legally hold it.) As a result, the federal government is handing them privledges left and right and paying next to no attention to international affairs or technological advances. The Western world needs a good, swift kick in the government, and people (myself included) are too lazy to do it themselves.
Excuse me?
Michael Ovitz owns a big share in Scour. I'd like to see him marshal some of his resources in its legal defense, hehe. Sausage King of Chicago
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Well, it seems that setting up a site which allows for easier transfers of binary files (Hey, whatever happened to FTP? Isn't that the easiest?) in the good ol' USA where someone or someones will use it for piracy, means that your technology is harmful to big bad corporations.
I mean, they lose money on a few files and will spend even more money trying to shut you down just to look good. I realize that they have to defend their copyrights, but it's very hard to get a grip on the internet's actions when it's all networked computers throughout the world, not just in the USA.
And these corporate giants, instead of doing what they do best with their competitors who make a legal dollar (which is to acquire them or merge with them), they instead go after these demons of technology and have their technology pushed underground.
If they were wiser, they'd buy the software, brand themselves all over it, place restrictions on it, and enjoy the riches. Time/Warner Scour. Sony Music Napster. Disney Gnutella. Make it easy and free. Sell ads (a'la CuteFTP's shareware tryout) and marketing ploys with it. I mean, who would want to use Napster if your email were going to be placed on a list, unless they REALLY wanted to use Napster?
And then use these tools to MARKET the companies who own them. Got a movie coming out? Cool, put up a screener on Scour. Eminem has a new EP coming out? Why not throw out a free track to Napster users as they login?
However, in pushing these technologies underground, they're also pushing them to machines in countries where our copyright and trademark laws aren't as enforced or cared about. Take a look at the box. That's http://www.box.sk/ It's a very helpful site for the right reasons, but also a very ILLEGAL site, if you consider DeCSS, Napster, Scour, Gnutella and other such technologies illegal.
On the Box, you can find cracks, serial numbers, ftp sites of mp3s, and so much more. And yet, they've never been touched by the Corporate American lawyers.
If Napster is shut down, you can expect to find many alternate versions throughout the world. If Scour is told to cease operations, perhaps a scour.sk will appear.
And perhaps one day, the corporations will learn to embrace the internet, not sue it for control of everything.
Dragon Magic
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
I see no reason to add such laws, if I want to build a search engine, I dont want to have to go ask a lawyer all the laws that I must abide by. Is that really the kind of internet you want to be browsing in the future? What next, ban hyperlinking?
Oh wait forgot, the MPAA is already trying to do that as well...
I think that would be fair, since most multimedia is pirated.
How about we just make mp3s illegal.. i mean, since most of them are pirated. Or maybe get Carnivore to do some blocking of websites and services that are known to give access or show where pirated material is at. Or just maybe, just maybe, the digital media world will figure out a way to use the internet in a good way, pretty much cutting distribution costs way down, just making a profit off of copying a file from them to you. In any case I dont like any of it, I have a feeling after all this Napster/DeCSS stuff gets over with we are going to have some interesting changes in how things are working..
There are a lot of places that search on things that aren't html pages, ftpsearch is a good one. What about lycos and mp3.lycos.com. Heck on Ebay you can buy burnt copies of software and im sure movies, not sure on that one. (my friend from work just bought an old game off of ebay, it was a burnt cd along with a list of other software that I could get from him on CD-R's. Heck, I think just about any search engine I can find mp3's, movies, etc etc its just the nature on how search engines work. Face it, no law is going to stop people from copying something that someone else bought. Some people will get whatever they can for free, before buying it for themselves. Cd and DVD recorders certainly dont help the situation, and neither does high quality digital video cameras that you can go down to Sears and buy, they are quite small, and sneak it into a movie theater and just record the movie as it plays. (from what ive seen, it seems like some of the movies are shot from the room that is playing the reel of film, maybe even patched into the machine that plays it, or video cameras are a lot better then I thought)
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he doesn't exist.
It cracks me up. Really. The whole idea of Linux as being "independent" of Big Corporations. You do remember who owns Sladshdot, don't you? And Freshmeat? That's right: a Big Corporation.
Between the huge number of Linux web sites owned by VA Linux, Internet.com, IDG, and others, it's laughable that anyone could consider these sites to be less biased than say, CNet or ZDNet. They still have advertisers, and they are still responsible to their stockholders to bring in huge profits. I think it should be well known to Slashdot that they idea of a "socially responsible" corporation is laregly a myth. VA Linux wants to sell you Linux machines, and if that means promoting it in an unethical way,
But is it more than just the media? Think of how many Linux "celebreities" work for Big Companies: Torvalds at Transmeta, the huge number of people at Red Hat (Alan Cox, etc), Larry Wall working at O'Reilly ("the biggest parasite on Open Source", according to Bruce Perens). Are these people truly independant? It's hard to be when you know where that check is coming from.
I really think that this whole "no bribes here" attitude, especially coming as it does from the supposedly "community-based" Linux sites, should be taken with a grain of salt the size of a Buick.
Thus:
Fucking idiot.
I thought it was some new protocol... "Internet Hyper-Text File Protocol"... oh well.
The whole "crackdown" on copyright laws is a bunch of bull. Why can't these people work WITH the file sharing companies rather than fighting them? These lawsuits are going to have a bad impact on the Music/Movie companies more than they will on people sharing the movies. These companies are going to lose money, because we (the people who download the movies) are also the ones who go see it in the movie theatre (if it is a good movie). By seeing the movie before going to the theatre, we know which ones suck therefore there is no reason to waste our money, or let friends waste their money, on it (survival of the fittest). Where as if the movie was good, we tell people about it and then we go see it in the theatre, and if its really good then we will buy in on DVD or VHS. These companies need to lay off the lawsuits and make movies that people want to see to keep us happy and them in business. If the movie is good, they'll get plenty of business from the theatres and from DVD and VHS sales.
Recommended Movies ---->
Half Baked --> BEST COMEDY EVER
Road Trip
Scary Movie
Office Space
Me, Myself, and Irene
Don't waste your money on these --->
I was going to do this category too,
but I would rather let you people fill
it in. (I would like to see your opinions.)
Ok... so I goto this site and look for chicken run and it comes up 3 times in VIVO format? Yeah and so why not go after the sites that have it up or am I totally missing something here? THis looks like another version of kill the messenger. I hope they rot in hell with the RIAA.
when they ban enctryption only criminals wi$21*J *#JF$%!@#$':
...but what on God's green earth are you talking about? You go through with half of your essay being the knight in shining truth, dispensing it out with a sword of shining steel, but you then go on to defend why you DO use mp3's AND divx's!?!
Am I missing something here? Seriously, if you are trying to prove your point that mp3's and divx's are the bane of the internet, then surely you wouldn't use them yourself.
--
Bad spellers of the world, untie!
"Many Napster users actually buy the CD's they pirate"
Although the above is often cited as a justification for using (and pirating) music (along with: many users are exposed to new bands and then go see them in concert) I'm not so sure about this!
I mean, you hear it a lot (I believe Napster is even using it as a defense). And CD sales are up. But the increased CD sales are not to new customers who would not have otherwise bought a CD.
And although I know a lot of Napster users - I don't know ANYONE who went out and bought a new CD as a RESULT of using Napster, nor who went to a concert for that matter. And on the flip side, I do know a ton of people who have stopped buying CDs because it is available for "free" on Napster...
So what gives? I mean, it all sounds great in theory - but you know - in practice - I also think MPAA has a point.
Mmmm The good 'ol MPAA
You have to love quotes like this:
"This lawsuit is about stealing," MPAA president Jack Valenti said in a press conference this morning. "Technology may make stealing easier, but it doesn't make it right."
I find it funny just how vocal he can be... In the press that is.
Get him into a courtroom and you hear things like this and (real audio version) like this.
Nevermind the megacorporation influence. Anyone this evasive is IMO extremely untrustworthy...
Wait... He heads the MPAA you say??? WELL I NEVER!!!
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
This all comes down to the simple problem that we've decided it's okay to pass laws that are good ideas, even if they undermine freedom.
We (Americans) like to call our country "a free country" and "the free world." We draw this statement from the fact that our Constitution basically says "You can't steal from people, you can't hurt people, but other than that, we, your government, won't tell you what to do." Other countries reserve the right to tell you what you can and can't do or say, so we call ourselves a "free country" as opposed to them.
We've expanded the definition of "hurt people" and "steal from people" with a bunch of more specific laws, like "you can't drive faster than X on road Y, because that results in car crashes, which hurt people" and "You can't copy certain music and distribute it, because that's stealing from the people who make that music."
But in order to remain free, we say that it is only illegal to break the law, not to make a product that helps people break the law. Handguns are used most often to hurt people, but they aren't illegal because it's only that usage, not the tool itself that is against the law. Radar detectors are most often used to avoid traffic cops and break speed limits, but they aren't illegal, because it's only speeding, not the tool that lets you speed, that's against the law.
But some people begin to look at statistics, and they say "with guns being legal, the amount of damage guns do outweighs their benefit, so they should be illegal." And some people say "with radar detectors, there are more people use them to break the law than use them legitimately (what exactly is the legitimate civilian use for radar detectors?) so they should be illegal." And now people say "there are more people use Napster and Scour to pirate copyrighted music than people who use them legitimately, so they should be illegal (or we should get to sue them)."
These are all good ideas, since they seem to result in the elimination of more harm than benefit.
BUT THAT'S NOT HOW THE UNITED STATES IS SUPPOSED TO WORK.
We're not supposed to go outlawing things that make it easier to break existing laws! Maybe freedom of speech allows lots of people to say horrible things, but it's the foundation of this country! Maybe freedom of religion results in evil Satanists and weirdo cult freaks, but it's the foundation of this country!
Next time you see a proposition to make something illegal, don't think about whether it's a good idea. Think about whether it's in the spirit of this country. Maybe we'd be better off without X, but that's not the point. This is a country founded on principles, not on the default feudal assumption of "We'll make it illegal to do things that are not in the best interest of the population as a whole." Without those principles, we're just a collection of people being organized by a miserably inefficient bureaucracy. With them we are "the free world" that we so like to claim we are.
I love the Scour Exchange client. One night I was looking for some songs by a local band called The Clarks, napster had about one song and SX had over a hundred. Another great thing about SX is the collection of music videos. My hard drive is steadily filling :)
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I think I'll sue the MPAA. Constantly hearing about how their sueing everyone is making me afraid I'll get sued, and that's lowering my quality of life.
If I could think of something pithy to say, I'd put it here. No really.
This strikes me as similar to a landlord being arrested for his tenants having committed a crime.
The secret of success is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake those, you've got it made. (Marx)
Thank god for the MPAA! Otherwise I'd never know where to look for good mp3 warez. This site is great! Downloading now...
Does anyone else find it amazing that the article reported that the MPAA is suing for $150,000 in damages per movie downloaded? Let's see - $150,000 divided by $7.50 per viewing in a theater - I guess they think everyone who downloads a movie would have gone to the theater 20,000 times instead.
"Truth is like a tragedy" -Coal Chamber
This is absurd. How can you sue a search engine for working? Next they'll be looking for the guy who invented FTP.
The original Howling Frog is a fictional character and has no UID.
Check out the research conducted by the RIAA. Take a close look at the screenshots of Scour Exchange and you will see that MOST of the files that they are downloading are not even FULL movies. I would be willing to bet that many of the "movies" they found on SX were trailers that people had downloaded and placed in their shared directories for download. The thing that I wonder is why is everyone of these major organizations jumping to the legal system as their primary means of problem resolution?