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Napster Aftermath: Fan Vs. Corporate Rights
The Napster court fight has become an unprecedently significant focal point for many competing interests -- corporations, fans, some artists -- grappling with intellectual property and copyright issues in the Net. It's also underscored the vulnerability and alienation of the tech culture, which may scorn Washington-style politicians, lawmakers and corporate lobbyists, but still is very much at their mercy.
The only real winners, of course, are the lawyers, as usual, and the handful of companies rich enough to pay and benefit them. The idea that individual artists are now safer and better protected by their good friends at RIAA, Sony, Bertelsmann (BMG), and AOL/Time-Warner may be the saddest and most wondrously naive legacy of the Napster flap. Maybe Little Red Riding Hood should have gotten into bed with the wolf, after all.
Everybody reading this knows who the real losers are -- the Net, music-lovers and sharers, artists not under contract to large conglomerates, individual consumers, and the notion of the Internet as a free and unrestricted space that connects individuals to information in culture in new and powerful ways. Rolled over by this ruling are the fans who've experienced years of extraordinary access to a shared culture, and have experienced access to music as an ingrained part of their lives and culture.
One legal expert after another has warned that the implications of RIAA's suit against Napster go far beyond music and will directly affect the sharing of other media as well. The ruling will definitely set the tone for how intellectual property is defined on the Internet, as it now stands, and pending further appeals, intellectual property will belong to a handful of super-corporations who can afford to acquire and defend copyrights. It also has implications for the open source and Free software movement, which have sparked a new and growing movement towards open media and new models of revenue for the information industry as well as for software. If the Napster judge's notions of copyright hold up, walls and fences will spring up all over the Net and the Web.
For more than a decade, music and other media fans have experienced an unprecedented period of free access to culture, particularly music -- a tradition many are now calling piracy. An entire generation has grown up learning, collecting and loving music, and entertainment companies have seen their profits continue to soar -- the much aggrieved recording industry posted a record $15 billion in profits last year. The recording industry has spent tens of millions of dollars in legal and public relations fees to turn this social evolution into a crime.
Lost in the mega-bucks brawling over copyright and intellectual property is the individual fan -- Napster says 20 milion people have downloaded its software -- who is not represented in court. But these people have some legitimate claims in this issue, although their concerns have been almost totally ignored. Conglomerates have also spent tens of millions of dollars on lobbyists who influence Congress, and now own most of the media outlets who cover Net issues like copyright. Fans and music lovers, like citizens, have no lobbyists in Congress.
Constitutional scholars will be brawling about this for years, but a convincing case can be made that new laws like the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, the basis for many recent legal actions against so-called copyright violators -- are a corporatist perversion of the whole idea behind copyright and intellectual property.
The framers of the Constitution were seeking to protect artists and authors when they enacted copyright laws. Their notion was that without some protection against copying and theft, writers would have no incentive to create new works. Copying books was difficult, and it was simple to enforce and prosecution laws against it. The Net is another story -- it's the biggest Xerox machine in the world, and it's almost impossible to completely shut down the copyrighting of intellectual property. Common sense would dictate that new ways of protecting artists and corporations be found that recognized the new reality of the Net.
Even then, people like Thomas Jefferson preached radical notions of open media. He feared the ownership of ideas: "that ideas should freely spread from one to another all over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man .."
What Jefferson was describing was the reality of the modern-day Internet, especially the rapidly-proliferating open source and open media idea: an environment using point-to-point, distributed architecture to move ideas freely and all over the world. Clearly, artists need to be paid for their work, and authors protected from theft. But there's no evidence that the entities copyright laws were meant to protect were billion dollar media corporatations with a distinctly unfair unadvantage over individuals when it comes to defining and enforcing copyright conventions.
In the last few years, spurred mostly by the proliferation of culture-sharing sites on the Web, media companies have launched a brilliantly successful blitzkrieg on behalf of corporate and "artistic" rights to control intellectual property, culminating in the DMCA and the spate of recent legal actions against Napster and individual music downloaders. No such campaign has been launched on behalf of music fans, who were literally bled dry for decades not just for artistic compensation but for fat corporate profits.
According to MIT's Henry Jenkins, writing in MIT's Technology Review, [http://www.techreview.com/articles/ma00/viewpoint.htm] no case involving fan rights has ever reached the courts. No civil-liberties organization has offered money or other support to fans who are denied access to their culture by corporate lawyers. Copyright and trademarks are now deemed legal "rights" granted to property owners, while fair use is a "defense" which can only be asserted in response to copyright infringement accusations. Most people caught in copyright battles, or on the receiving end of hundreds of thousands of warning letters being issues in response to the DMCA lack the financial resources or the political acumen to take on vast entertainment conglomerates in court.
And one of the most insidious consequences of the DMCA and the entertaining industry's war against sites like Napster is the elimination of the notion of "fair use" which gave fans and users some limited protection against absolute copyright enforcement. Fair use is the right to use copyrighted material, regardless of the wishes of the creator or owner of the material. A copyright gives the owner certain rights; fair use limits them. Under the right of fair use, you can quote from this column to criticize it, quote sections from it, and reproduce them to attack, support me, or disseminate my views. In these and other ways, you have the right to use this column independently of how I say it ought to be used,and that doesn't make you a "thief" or a "pirate." Copyright was never meant to be "absolute," or even long-standing, especially when it comes to intellectual, rather than physical property.
But the DMCA and recent court rulings against music-sharing eliminate any idea that the downloading of music constituted "fair use" of artistic work. Some fans and legal scholars have argued that sites like Napster, Gnutella, Free.net and Scour.net promote the sale of music, especially for personal use. A marketing professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania commissioned one study that fond that over 91% of Napster users buy as much or more music than before they used Napster, with 28% purchasing more. Lawyers for Time Warner, Inc., Sony and Bertelsmann, represented by the RIAA, cited studies that found that 22% of Napster users said that because of Napster, they didn't buy CDs any more or bought fewer CD's. In the United States, it's possible to get studies supporting any conceivable point-of-view.
It seems logical that there is a significant amount of "fair use" involved in the downloading of music. It also seems logical that people who can download new CD's for free won't pay $16 for them, and perhaps shouldn't have to. At the same time, even music industry lobbyists concede that free music sites, from MP3.com to Napster to Gnutella, have provided new artists with new forums for their work, permitted music lovers to experiment with new forms of music, and generated tremendous interest in music that is contributing, directly or indirectly, to record music industry sales.
Rather than seek some new legal middle-ground -- sites that offer some free as well as paid music, for example, or experiment with new ways to provide artists with revenue -- the music industry has sought and won the most extreme legal remedies, ones that will continue to be undermined by new technologies and the evolution of new music-sharing sites, some legal and above-ground, some not. What seems inconceivable is that tens of millions of young music fans are going to return to a system where they can only listen to music they pay exorbitant prices for. That isn't going to happen.
But what does seem to be happening is that media companies are hijacking culture, and using artistic compensation as a smokescreen.
As Jenkins points out in his article, if Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll and the authors of the Bible were covered by the DMCA, none of their works would have received a fraction of the attention or influence they've generated.
Fans are more than consumers. They are entitled to have some rights, just as artists and corporations are. They pay the freight, especially in cyberspace, which has seen a mind-boggling flowering of fan zines, sites, mailing lists and Web pages. Fans are critics, journalists, and story-tellers. They are constituents in their own folklore and have rights of access to their own culture. Virtually all discussions of intellectual property in cyberspace are about responding to corporate and political anxieties about controlling text, images, sounds and information.
This leaves the fan out in the cold. Most of them can't afford to take on the lawyers for Viacom or Fox.
We've sold our souls by buying this drivel for so long. Now we are paying the price.
t
This is a battle happening in the courtrooms and pressrooms.. not one happening in my livingroom, where I will happily continue to download whatever I want, whenever I want. Attached are some links you'll want to follow after the shutdown. I've been handing them out via e-mail and on IRC. Cheers!
This friday (07/28) Napster will be shut down by a federal judge. Additional information can be found at the end of this e-mail. You all know what Napster is, and alot of you probably use it. The RIAA (the people shutting Napster down) believes this will put an end to people sharing music online.
Therefore, in light of this, I am presenting a dozen alternatives to Napster which you may utilize with the same functionality as Napster. I would also urge you to boycott the RIAA by not buying any of their music from your local retail outlets or online until they drop their suit. Either way remember that any fool can make a law (or a ruling) and any fool will mind it. Consider this my way of telling the RIAA where to stick their injunction. Cheers!
~ Signal 11
Napster clones
--------------
http://www.napigator.com/ Convert the Napster client to run on the OpenNAP servers, or search both networks simultaniously. Windows only.
http://opennap.sourceforge.net/
OpenNap: the open source napster server.
Napster alternatives
--------------------
http://gnutella.wego.com/
From their website: "Gnutella is a fully- distributed information-sharing technology. Loosely translated, it is what puts the power of information-sharing back into your hands."
http://freenet.sourceforge.net/
FreeNet. From their website: "Freenet is a peer- to-peer network designed to allow the distribution of information over the Internet in an efficient manner, without fear of censorship. Freenet is completely decentralized, meaning that there is no person, computer, or organisation in control of Freenet or essential to its operation. This means that Freenet cannot be attacked like centralized peer-to-peer systems such as Napster.
http://sx.scour.net/
Scour Exchange. From the website: "With Scour Exchange you can share your favorite music, videos..." Windows only.
http://music.lycos.com/mp3/
Lycos' MP3 search engine.
http://www.cutemx.com/
CuteMX - From the website: "CuteMX is your own personal file server and a powerful search engine rolled into one. CuteMX eliminates the hassle of setting up FTP and web servers and its real-time search provides successful results." Website also features a free music download section.
http://www.shoutcast.com/
Not exactly downloadable music, but hey, I like it. Tune into hundreds, if not thousands, of online radio stations featuring every genre you could think of.
audiofind.com - no information
Information on the shutdown7 407,2608120,00.html
---------------------------
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/newsbursts/0,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20 000726/aponline200558_000. htm
http://www.msnbc.com/news/437532.asp?cp1=1
What some artists think of the RIAAv e/index.html 5 7235&cid=191
-----------------------------------
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/lo
Courtney Love does the math
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/07/26/23
Chris Johnson on slashdot.org
Distribution of this e-mail is encouraged. Feel free to add more links to this if you decide to forward this on, I'm sure I missed a few. :)
As Jenkins points out in his article, if Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll and the authors of the Bible were covered by the DMCA, none of their works would have received a fraction of the attention or influence they've generated.
That's because during those times, you couldn't copy their entire work to your Zip Disk, take it to the office, and transfer it to Taiwan over your 100 Mbit/s LAN connection to the company T-3.
Why do you think DMCA and similar protective coverage originated? Why is Napster all of the sudden there when we've been taping songs off the radio for years? Because MP3 and CD burners are the printing press of digital music.
It's only when we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything...
I'm considering designing a simple one-page flyer that can inform people about the issue. Something along the lines of, "This isn't a solicitation for you to vote for anyone. Just a reminder that democracy is a responsibility, and you have to watch what's going on in Washington." It can address various related issues, such as facts about the Napster lawsuit and about the Copyright Law being amended, extending the length of copyrights.
Does anyone think that such a thing is worthwhile? If I released a PDF of it, would anyone print it out and hand it out to people? Am I crazy?
--
We believe this is one answer to the MP3 situation and have started a website at www.fairtunes.com that allows you to do exactly that. It is the Stephen King model implemented for music. We allow you to securely send any amount of money using your credit to ANY artist.
But do we live in a society that can adjust to a voluntary system when we've lived so long in a system that has always set the price for us? Can we handle the freedom that Napster gives us? Can we be trusted to use Napster responsibly? Young kids will always pirate music, and we accept that, but is voluntary payment an option for everyone else?
Matt.
No fan has "lost" anything they have a legitimate right to. They can still go out and buy music, or trade with all their friends they made on napster, or grab one of the other services.
The RIAA / artists obviously haven't lost anything.
The indie musicians were getting questionable value from Napster from anyone's viewpoint, so they really haven't lost anything.
Signed artists who want their MP3s distributed... well, they can get a website!
The only people who are "real losers" are Napster stockholders and employees. They're losing their gravy train, becasue they haven't fixed the problem (no way to stop piracy yet) or expanded into a more legitimate market (general file-swapping?)
They can throw hundreds of lawyers. Millions of dollars, tons of resources against napster, etc. We can throw hundereds, of thousands of people at the problem. Start you own servers. If everybody started a server they would have to shut down everybody. Look at it like speeding. Yes its illegal, however it generally accepted because it would be absolutely impossible to enforce it 100%. So some speeding is tollerated. You are allowed to go by a cop at maybe 5mph over, do 10mph over though and you're pushing it.
If there we so many servers out there that it became absolutely impossible for the RIAA to stop every single one then they might just give up. Kinda the reverse of what they're doing. "We'll spend millions of $$$ because they can't compete with us and afford all the legal fees." Fine you want to play that way... We will set up millions of servers and see if you can keep up with it.
-cpd
I can't wait until they ban any file transfering because it could be used for pirating software. I can't stand administering ftpd! :)
_______
2B1ASK1
Number of CDs I've purchased in three years prior to downloading Napster: 12
Number of CDs I've purchased since downloading Napster 6 months ago: 23
Number of CDs I'll purchase in the next three years: 0
The facts are simple: many of the people who used Napster were either doing so with the intent to break the law, or believed that fair use would protect their use of the software. The courts seem to have ruled that this is not the case.
Now, I don't like large music companies. I don't like RIAA asking people to spend $20 or more for music that isn't particularly good. But no one is putting a gun to anyone's head. No one is forcing anyone to buy RIAA-sponsored music. We have lost no fundamental rights here, and it is ridiculous to suppose that we have.
Granted, Napster was a potential channel for independent artists everywhere, a distribution means that was not controlled by RIAA, was not horrifically expensive, and ensured that your music would get out to a wider audience. Guess what? So is a common web page. So is IRC. So are plenty of other distribution channels (not all of them Internet-based) that were completely untouched by this ruling.
I don't like RIAA. I think that they're a powerful force working for the cheapening of society for a few extra dollars. Spawn of hell that it is, though, they did have a point: many of the people who used this software were doing so to break the law. And while it pains me that it is that much harder for an independent to have a widely-heard voice, consider this: most of the music traded on Napster was from RIAA-sponsored bands.
Let's not be hypocritical, ladies and gentlemen. Let's realize that RIAA may be pandering to the lowest common denominator, but many people who cry out against RIAA were listening to music that they'd not have heard without it.
If you really want things to change, then you'll have to start with yourself. Eschew all RIAA products, whether you bought them or stole them or borrowed them. The more you give your minds over to them, the harder they will be to beat in the long run.
Fight the Power.
www.alarmist.org
I agree that corporations have perverted copyright in legal cases to their own end, and bolstered their claims with DMCA.
However, that has nothing to do with Napster. Napster, in my mind, is not about copyright protection. It's about the independence of transport method. Let's say that 90% of all pirate videos were shipped fedex, and accounted for 90% of fedex's business (haha). Would fedex be a pirate courier service? No.
The same goes for Napster. It may be USED for a lot of piracy, but that doesn't make it responsible. It has the same policy as any ISP: they don't patrol their users, but they'll take action when it is reported to them. As shown with the Metallica/Dre lawsuit.
For me, nothing was more telling that this slashdot comment. The artist complains, "So- the judge is taking away a _major_ distribution channel from me, at the request of... my competition." Marilyn Hall Patel should have heard HIM in court.
So, Jon, does this mean you wouldn't mind if I bought a copy of one of your books, scanned it, and published it on my web site? I mean, DAMN, amazon is charging $16 for your recent book. Nobody should have to pay that much for a book, right?
I mean, are you really just out to make a buck or are you doing it for your fans?
One of the reasons Napster was so successful was that there was a large user base, hence a larger selection of files. By having so many alternatives to Napster, aren't you diluting the music pool? I'm not saying this is your fault, but I think fewer (hence larger) communites should be engouraged to have a larger collection of resources. I'm not going to have 5-6 different clients open, and I'm sure others won't as well.
Being with you, it's just one epiphany after another
Ok, so the RIAAssholes got to napster. Somwhere further down this article, Signal 11 posted about 50 links to MP3 related software/sites.
Now let us look at the alternatives:
1. Other MP3 software (for arguments sake, let us say there are only 5 other programs, though any idiot can figure out that's a crock)
2. FTP
3. HTTP
4. IRC
5. (gasp, so sad) AOL
6. Email
7. Snail Mail (burn a cd and send it.. oh well)
So, RIAA attacks #1, gets a few shut down. Then people move to #2. Tag and move and tag and move, even if RIAA somehow limits all of the above (which any idiot knows is next to impossible) then people go down the list. Once you get to #7, more programs are coming out, move back to #1. Endless cycle.
This will be an endless cycle until RIAA stops fighting us, forcing us to "extend and make them embrace" our middle finger. There are more resources out there than ever before, and in case they didn't realize, we can always go back to ole tape and radio (although we won't).
Perhaps the only thing that can stop us is if JonKatz starts posting his entire text to his articles on each of these methods. If that happens, well, there are a lot more things that we have to worry about.
We don't need no Net Explorer We don't need no Thought control
Lets see..
..DING!
"Media corporations"...DING!
"Popular Culture"...DING!
"Copyright issue:...DING!
"Betrayl"..DING!
"Political Vulnerability"...DING!
"Tech Culture"...DING!
"Alienation"...DING!
"Information in culture"..DING!
"Shared culture"..DING!
"Lives and culture"...DING!
"Open media" DING**DING!!!
"Corporatist perversion" DING!
"New Reality" DING!
"Hijacking Culture"
"Media Companies" (twice!) DING!
As Katz points out, the media corporations control popular culture with political vulnerable Columbine issues, and copyright betrayls. Then again, the political corporations control popular media culture with vulnerable Columbine issues. Some might argue that Columbine political controls make corporate media culture issue betrayls as well.
I could write better drivel with a Perl script that randomly assembled blocks of text from Katz's buzzword-bingo writing style. Spare me.
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
I have setup a page in protest of the RIAA at www.riaaboycott.org please visit the site and if you agree with what's there, sign the petiton! Oh, and I'm not making any money off this or anything (actually I'm spending $15 a month), I'm just trying to get something done instead of bitching for a change. Thanks :)
-colin
-Colin
An MP3 has a playback quality that rivals radio.
Radio stations play music for free.
People have listened to radio for the duration of the recorded music sales market.
People will continue to buy what they can get for free.
The real issue that I see in the Napster case is that the big record companies have lost control over what listeners hear for free. It used to be that these record companies could control the content of free music outlets(Radio, MTV, VH1, etc.) that's why crappy songs are hyped so much. Since people are cattle/lemming like in nature they buy what the media tells them is cool regardless of the artistic work's actual merit. Listeners are told music is good and are so insecure on their own tastes that they decide to conform to the corporate image of coolness/sophistication.
Napster came along and essentially allowed the individual to make his/her own programming decisions. They can listen to inferior to CD quality music and make a decision as to whether they want to buy it. Napster is essentially a listener programmed radio station without the adds.
What the record corporations are losing is the power to promote specific songs. This is why people buy CDs with only one good song for $16.95. That's also the reason why singles cost $7.95 or so. With Napster people are able to preview entire albums before they buy and that's going to ruin that nice little scam that record companies have been playing.
Don't think that this is about piracy. If that were the case they would have gone after radio stations a long time ago. If these guys win I could see them creating their own Napster with inferior MP3s of only the songs that they want to promote, geared solely to get you to buy those one-hit-wonder CDs.
--Purple lightning. That's always a good sign.
tilts the copyright issue dramatically in favor of media corporations, who now virtually own popular culture
Wait just a second here. Corporations *created* popular culture. You can't go back now and claim that we want corporate-created popular culture but without the corporations.
In any town, you'll find many great bands, for example, that make you wonder why you don't hear them on the radio. And nobody's ever heard of those bands, except locals, and the locals often put them down for being, well, local. They play for half empty coffeehouses and provide background noise in clubs. But if one of these bands was promoted and hyped as being underground and pushed into rotation on MTV, then it would enter pop culture and people would be clamoring to hear them. And those same people want to be able to nab MP3s of that band's music. So now, after Moby, for example, has hit is big, you can't act like "screw the record company, screw the ticket agents, screw the suits," because they provided Moby to the masses.
If you want to be anti-corporate, then you need to walk the talk. Go local. Don't watch TV. Stop drinking Coke. Don't waste time armchair second-guessing what Apple or RedHat or Microsoft do.
It's not the consumer that is paying the piper for the garbage that the music industry foists upon us. It's the music industry that is paying for their mistakes.
Collectively, the music industry is breathing a sigh of relief that mp3's are not CD quality. They are also relieved that so few people have computers with good enough speakers (relatively) to bother listening to music purely on their computer. But they know what is around the corner. Sire/Reprise, Time Warner, BMG, you better start saving your pennies now, because the consumer is no longer going to tolerate your abuse.
...my weaselometer needle has jammed in the little red wedge on the right hand side of the dial.
The point about copyright is that it, and the other intellectual property rights, made modern life possible.
Copyright started as a response to the printing press, that made large-scale copying (hundreds of accurate copies per worker in the time it took a monastic scribe to do one innacurate one) possible.
Suddenly, there was a reason why ideas had value over and above their intrinsic value, and a mechanism to make the authors and the printers rich sort of evolved from there. Suddenly it was possible to get rich by having and developing ideas; it was no coincidence that copyright and patents were developed at or around the start of the industrial revolution (which begat the technological infrastructure that you're reading this on, via a number of intermediary steps). The one makes the other possible - simple as that, and the whole thing is powered by the inexhaustibel resource of human greed. Would Watt have bothered if he and Boulton couldn't have got as rich as Croesus?
Katz tells us that "artists themselves have important rights", but it's a weasel qualifier. I suspect he's uncomfortable with the argument he's deploying, because he hasn't thought it through. The important right of the artist - of any creative individual - is to sell his or her work for a price he or she deems appropriate (zero in a lot of cases, but that's not mandatory).
That price, plus cost of sales and middleman's fees, gets paid by the people who get the benefit of the artist's work. And it should be paid: commercial work is not a gift, nor should it be.
The only justifiable objection to be raised to the RIAA/Metallica action is that the middlemen involved - RIAA's members, who Metallica chose to use in the ordinary course of their business - appear to overcharge mightily. There are two options here: cut out the middleman (for which Stephen King is to be applauded in showing a very plausible way forward) or use a cheaper middleman. Is that possible? It may be that the promotion and marketing that RIAA members supply justifies the high cost to the end-user, and their massive profits arise from a small take on each of billions of units. Maybe not, in which case there's room to undercut them. If there is, eventually the market will produce such an undercutter, but don't hold your breath. It's more profitable to join 'em than beat 'em, mostly.
Be all that as it may, no-one can, without hypocrisy, complain about the ordinary operation of capitalism unless and until they're prepared to stick up for the other possibilities. I ain't, simply because I enjoy the idea of living off the back of sweated third-world labour (we all are, or at least everyone with the technical and fiscal wherewithal to read slashdot is).
If Katz is sincere - and he may be - his argument is, roughly, equivalent to suggesting that you should have a right to go steal ripe crops from fields in protest at the mark-up applied by the commodities exchanges, wholesalers, distributors, bakeries and supermarkets on the price of bread.
-- AndrewD
A Maze of Twisty Little Laws, All Different.
This history also points out that what are now known as copyrights were used long ago to limit who could and could not print almost anything. Once again the privilege (and money) generally went to the rich and well-connected.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
So he asked me what I thought of his company, to which I replied "I think you are ripping the artist off". He said smugly "We just don't have copyrighted work, we are a way for independent artists to distribute thier work". Ever try to search napster for a band or song whose name you haven't heard of? What a crock! Then he tried to tell me "what the artist wants". I informed him that many artists signed with a label...many well known new artists in fact are currently in debt to their contracts (not that this is fair) and it's not just the record company that gets screwed if they don't have as many of thier records sold as possible and can't get out of that debt. Look at a band like TLC. They declared bankruptcy after their biggest hit album.
It's a hard life for these bands (outside of the glory of being on stage and the screaming fans). Many working musicians under contract have to spend thier lives on tour working much harder than any programmer. It must be nice hustle a stupid greedy VC, get advertisers for your site and be able to buy all that stuff and still claim you are doing the artist a favor.
It became very apparent that he really had no clue as to the life of the typical working musician. So then I wanted to hear him play that guitar that he just bought. He can barely play!
Now I'm no big fan of the RIAA, and philosophically I believe there is a need change the paradigm of music distribution. Frankly I think that OpenNap and Freenet are a good thing...because they are free and open...and only the fans gain. But I have a hard time when some 19 punk profits as much as a record company exec and then tries to sell me and the rest of the world on his virtuous arguments that he had to scramble to come up with because he's all of a sudden feeling the heat.
Scroll down a bit to 'Authors'
Check 'JonKatz' from the list.
Click 'savehome'.
He was interesting the first couple of times I read his stories. Now I just think he's an alarmist troll.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Have you read the text of the Audio Home Recording Act?
Back in 1992, the record companies went to Congress to try and obtain royalty payments on blank digital audio media.
Congress made them compromise. Both sides got something.
The record companies have, for the last 8 years, received a payment for each and every digital audio tape and blank audio CDR sold. This was to compensate the record industry for lost sales due to non-commercial, home copying.
However, Congress does not like to pass laws in which people are taxed on one hand, and the activity they are being taxed on is made illegal on the other hand, so they added this provision:
USC Title 17, Chapter 10, Paragraph 1008:
No action may be brought under this title [Title 17 == the copyright code] alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.
In short, Congress said that if the Recording industry wanted Congress to tax home recording media, then that home recording would have to be legalized.
They did just that. Paragraph 1008 defines all non-commercial copying of copyrighted music as non-infringing. It isn't illegal!
The Napster judge tried to ignore this law, but the Court of Appeals basically told the judge that her reasoning was completely wrong:
The court below ignored, however, that 17 U.S.C. 1008 permits non-commercial copying by consumers using either analog or digital audio recording devices or "such a device"; that the legislative history makes clear that Congress intended by that language to immunize all non-commercial copying of music by consumers;
When Congress passed the AHRA, the music industry was not up in arms. Instead, the industry was quite happy, because they were to begin to receive, and have received continuously for 8 years, a stream of "royalties" from the sale of blank digital audio recording media. At the time, I, and many others, thought that this law was extremely unfair, because it created a royalty on ALL media, not just those media used to copy other people's copyrighted works. In other words, if a garage band bought blank CDRs to press their album on, they paid royalties to the RIAA, which distributed the royalties based on their own sales figures.
In retrospect, if the courts can be bothered to uphold paragraph 1008, this law will show itself to be the biggest bargain ever struck between the people and the Recording industry, because it completely and unambiguously legalized all Napster-like activity!
If the recording industry no longer feel that the royalties they are receiving are adaquate, they have every right to go to Congress and ask that the royalty rate be increased. However, Napster is NOT stealing, because they record industry IS receiving payment, in the form of a tax on recording media.
The mere fact that this consumer right has been mostly dormant for 8 years (while record industry profits from blank digital audio media have HARDLY been dormant) is no reason to assert that it no longer exists now that the technology has matured that allows users to exercise that consumer right.