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Implications For Software Like Napster And Gnutella?
vsync64 asks: "My employer hosts the main Gnutella site, and with the recent ruling against Napster, our servers are being pretty much crushed by the flood of Napster refugees. I'm wondering how much longer people believe this software will be usable. Obviously, given past events such as the whole DeCSS thing, the software will never disappear. Since there is a long tradition of "piracy" and sharing, going back to world-writable FTP sites, IRC channels, and BBSes, the practice won't disappear. I'm just curious as to what options the government and major corporations have in trying to stop it. They could probably get the software removed from the main sites, and possibly enact legislation to criminalize 'systems [and software] for the primary purpose of violating copyright', but what would the media and the unwashed masses think of this? Could copyright violation become stigmatized, much as smoking has, or could such an action be the final straw that turns public opinion against the large corporations once and for all?"
As hard as it might be to believe, the vast majority of people I deal with don't really care either way. They don't see how it affects them. They just assume it's the same people that steal software (possibly true) and that they'll get into trouble for it and it will end.
We're unlikely to get favorable public opinion in the near future. Big business will win this battle, stigmatize the whole process of "free music" downloading, and it'll continue essentially as it is now. I don't think it's comparable to smoking...it's comparable to smoking pot. It's illegal, that doesn't slow down anyone that wants to do it.
My two cents at least...
Well, there is a long history of copyright law in the US. Its initial intent comes from the US Constitution.
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
This was initially interpreted fairly narrowly, and the time of copyright monopoly was comparably short. In the last 100 years, the copyright monopoly period has been extended and extended, primarily on the behalf of large corporations like Disney (who wants to continue monopolizing original Mickey Mouse films).
The original intent of copyright law - to PROMOTE the release of material for eventual public domain status - has been corrupted. Copyrights no longer expire. Technically they do expire, but copyright law has been extending copyright periods faster than they can expire. Thus, the copyrights no longer pass into the public domain at all.
The digital technology can change all of that. Copyright holders of a medium amenable to digitization, such as movies and music, are scared. Previously, I could copy a CD to a tape and give it to my brother. These actions are essentially unprosecutable and unpreventable in a society with some privacy rights.
Now, in a digital age, I can rip a CD and email it to my brother. This action is also unprosecutable and unpreventable (assume I use PGP on the email). This underscores the movement of a digital copyright into public domain. It is unstoppable on technical grounds.
Napster and Gnutella facilitate the same actions - but on a much broader level. So they raise the issue - how does copyright law apply ??? And how should it apply ??
A bigger issue still is the record companies. They provide almost no digital internet distribution even though there is a market of more than 20 million consumers. How scared must they be of digital distribution to do that ??
They will eventually adopt a small pay per download market. They have to. It will largely calm down the napster commerce. And napster/gnutella can still be used on uncopyrighed materials like concert tapes, or copyrighted and approved materials like band demo songs.
Fundamentally, sharing music or moveies with one's neighbor is not something you ought to be prosecuted for.
Every single person who reads this post has probably been in a situation where someone else took advantage of them. It doesn't matter if it hurts directly or not (witness the Slashdot/Hellmouth debacle), people don't like it when their things are used in a way they don't like. Upsetting other people because you can get away with it is the enemy of civilization.
So, from a societal standpoint, it is important that it be made as difficult and stigmatized as possible. Of course it can't be stopped; what can? Nonetheless, this is just social darwinism. Get used to it.
There's a whole lot of emphasis on Napster at the moment, but the stakes are much higher than that. Consider the lawsuit that got launched at the folks that wrote PAN not too long ago. These people are after any and all means for transmitting information. Taken to a logical extreme, many of the core features of the Internet are at stake, since any of these tools can be used to distribute copyrighted works.
If a Usenet reader that decodes binaries is a violation of copyright, how much longer before other apps fall prey? FTP? HTTP? If it's found that the means by which binaries are distributed on the Internet is itself a copyright violation, how long before the Internet itself is the target of this kind of lawsuit.
This is a war folks. This war is about who controls the keys to the gates of information. MP3's are nothing more than the initial battleground. The music industry is scared as hell right now over possibly losing the 50 year absolute control they've enjoyed over this art form, with the movie industry also bringing up the rear guard. They have the legal, monetary, and political backing to turn that fear into something destructive against anything that threatens them.
If Napster falls to these gate keepers, you can damn well be assured that they are only to be the first. For those of you in the "I don't collect MP3's, so I don't give a crap" I guess we'll just wait for you to jump on board when something that does concern you eventually does fall under attack. Of course, by then it'll most likely be too damn late.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
It's been interesting to see my parents' reaction to Napster. My mother at one point referred to it as "anarchist," which really cracked me up until I thought about it. She has a point, however. Napster (and Gnutella) are a bunch of people doing what they want regardless of existing law (be it correct or not, I don't want to get into that debate). I made my father a John Denver CD from Napstered mp3s in a spate of feeling guilty about breaking his old turntable. He is really glad to have the music back, but he is still pretty nervous when it is playing. Kind of like he is afraid he will get caught. All of this goes to show that while the world is still run by boomers, Napster will never really become an accepted mainstream critter, and the corporations will continue to win legal battles. B
"Fifty million Americans can't be wrong," said Rep. Billy Tauzin. Gore - 50,999,897 Bush - 50,456,002
These sorts of problems will continue for as long as future generations grow up believing that they are entitled to those things that previous generations had to work for. To read some of the newsgroups and forums (especially the one at http://forums.napster.com), so many of those people truly believe that they're doing absolutely nothing wrong, that they're not stealing from anyone (because bits are not "tangible"), and that in fact they're happy in punishing an industry that reaped the benefits of a prosperous economy.
The key here is education. The recording industry and/or artists need to find a way to explain to people that through their actions, they are indeed stealing. Intellectual property has real value, and when it's copied around with no compensation for the creator of that work, it's value is decreased.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Without copyrights, tools such as the BSD license and Gnu Public License, which allow open source development to happen with some modicrum of protection and safety, would not be possible.
I think it's possible to have both copyrights and relative freedom of information, and we need both. While information may "want to be free", we need a more developed sense of ethics online if we want other beneficial aspects of copyright to remain.
What's wrong with "copyright violation becom[ing] stigmatized"? I think this would be a good thing. Big corporations would have less of a hair trigger when it came to the net, the door would be more open for a legitimate micropayment system (since it would no longer be the case that 99% of the audience wants/knows how to go it for free), and so on.
If you think copyright law is a bad thing (Disclaimer: I don't), then try to get the law changed. Don't just break the law and wait for someone else to change it for you.
to freely distribute information? So many of us balk at the shutdown of Napster; what if Napster had been distributing bomb-making instructions?
Would it have been okay to shut them down then? No? What if it were used to distribute the names and locations of people in the Witness Protection Program (That's in America, I don't know if other countries have something similar)?
or, while we're at it, what if Napster was being used to distribute your credit card number?
Napster wasn't shut down because it did anything illegal, it was shut down because in fervantly protection free speech, it failed to provide a reasonable system through which someone could request the removal of material that was harmful to them. True, the only people that were "harmed" were big and rich and greedy, but that doesn't mean that only BRG people *can* be hurt. If you had awakened one morning to find your name, address, phone number, cc #, and photos of you and your wife in bed being distributed through Napster, how would you have gotten them removed? Who would you have contacted? You would have had no options to solve the problem.
Systems like Napster are great, and the freedom they provide is an unarguably nessecary component, but there has to be some system to address the objections raised on a case by case basis.
Judge Pag, the Learned, Impartial, and Very Relaxed
Napster wasn't shut down because it did anything illegal, it was shut down because in fervantly protection free speech, it failed to provide a reasonable system through which someone could request the removal of material that was harmful to them.
/easiest/ protocol to deal with individual users on who were acting up. So you see any of these four major protocols is worse than napster. Napster was shut down because it's /primary purpose/ was exchange of mp3's, a majority of which were copyrighted, a majority of those by RIAA clients.
Sorry, that just isn't true. If it were, then email, irc, usenet and the web would all have to be shut down. To go to your example, I could post bombmaking instructions to any of them without being permanently removed. I could be using an anonymous remailer for three of them and for irc, they could ban my IP from the server but I would probably be at the library and could just go to one of the other myriad libraries in the area. Or I could take advantage of the fact that my ISP uses dynamic IPs and use a diff. username each time, but then I risk getting reported and tracked so I would prob. do the library thing. Napster was actually the
BTW photos can't be put up on Napster. have you ever even used the fscking service on which you are commenting? You can put mp3's in your directory for d/l and there are chat channels where you can type stuff. That's it. IRC is 100x more dangerous. Also if you didn't notice large numbers of ppl w/ mettalica songs were systematically removed from the system at one point. How hard would it be to do that to people doling out credit card numbers, as well as logging their IP to report to their provider? You can't hide behind a wall of anonymity with napster, at least not without being seriously being traceable, the way you can with other protocols. So then the law tracks them down and prosecutes them. Whereas we know of people distributing credit card numbers elsewhere online who haven't been caught.
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