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RIAA Responds to Napster - Raises Serious Questions
Cosimo Leipold writes "The RIAA has placed a reply to Napster's now infamous Motion for Stay. The points they raise are very good and well worth a read. It is very interesting to see the claims Napster made in its early days -- including that you would never find a no-name artist on their search (which they now claim is what they are all about!) -- claims that they can't stop pirated music (though it is explained how it could be done) -- claims they can't ask for copyright priviliges from artists (though they already do -- from "new" artists! -- if they can ask "Joe Blow" they can ask Metallica no?) -- etc. It is a damaging read for Napster.
Acrobat Reader required: RIAA PDF"
That is absolutly not true.
Fact: Sales in record stores near colleges are down.
This also is not a direct cause effect relationship. As you cannot prove that record sales by college students themselves are down unless a seperate study is done on that matter. There are two important facts to remember when considering the previous fact.
Fact: more and more college students are living farther distances from college (it would be interesting to see a graph over a long period of time of college record sales to see if there has been a steady decline in the amount it increased every year previous to this years decreasement.)
Fact: College students tend to buy many things online, CDs included. If all the major online record sales companies could look in their database to see all the 20 somethings in college towns and include say 80% of that figure into the total college record sales. Would be another interesting figure.
So anyways, anyone up for another study??
Before you start constructing arguments, you must begin by constructing phrases. What did you mean by this?
Then the suit should be focusing on the advertizing campaign and Napster's implicit concent, which is sort of the way that the RIAA is trying to go with their most recent documents. See,they've realized that their original grounds (which were entirely based on the idea that Napster was a pirating service) don't work, so now they're trying to point to the idea that Napster executives knew that their users were copying copyrighted material. I wish them luck, actually, but doubt that the judge will fall for the reversal.
You bring up some good points, but do not support the premise that I failed to complete my metaphor. Napster is a medium (regargless of another poster's illogical claim that a medium cannot be implimented on top of another medium, e.g. IP over phone lines) and all transport media should, IMHO, be treated the same. Laws of free speach and the responsibilities of the media owner apply. In that light, I think that Napster, Kodak and The Phone Company all have the same rights and obligations.
The public has overreacted, but the RIAA started the war.
In what way is this not a wholly reasonable response to the problem? Let's say this alleged overreaction causes half the RIAA companies to go bankrupt next year -- not that there's a snowball's chance of that happening. (Except as a legal shell game to transfer wealth.) Will they have lost more than the "Big Five" have stolen from the public in the last few years?
Remember what fraction of a dollar a CD costs to manufacture, how much you pay, and how little goes either to the artist or to the CD manufacturer. Integrate over time.
Would those RIAA companies' bankruptcy at the hands of Napster really make up for the way that industry has been jacking up prices ... forever?
We shouldn't let FTC's price-fixing decision against the recording industry go forgotten, either. They got off with a real wrist slap, but still paid most of a billion bucks ... to who? How? Lawyers I guess. Maybe a better judgement would have been that they have to let Napster work its future out unimpeded.
Woefully, points 1 and 2 (which seemed to be going somewhere) do not lead to point 3. Neither does point 3 serve to tie the premise together. It is true, compelling and misleading. Thus, unless you can shed light on what you meant I cannot say that I see this as anything but a logical fallacy.
Again, please construct an argument. Napster is a filesystem over which users share files containing sound. It turns out that, given a filesystem, users will share copyrighted sounds. Really not Napster's problem any more than it's Kodak's problem that child pornographers use their film. I am strongly in the camp that says that the use of a medium where monitoring activity is possible should not lead to a mandate to monitor activity. Digital camaras should not be required to transmit their images to the FBI, phone switches should not have pre-installed taps and Napster should not have to monitor it's users file sharing transactions in order to prevent copyright infringement. These are all, as far as I can tell, the same issue: should the medium provider (profit-making or not) be required to sanitize and/or monitor it's usage?
You appear to believe half of the RIAA's answer (that shutting down services that don't sanitize or monitor is reasonable), but do you believe what I think is the logical conclusion: that sanitization and monitoring should be required? I'm not trying to say that the RIAA wants this (I think they do, but that's just my personal theory for which I have zero evidence). However, they have certainly taken a big first step.
If people start using Slashdot to share uuencoded MP3s, should Slashdot be shut down? What if they advertize that they're the hottest site for discussion forums full of MP3s? What if they say "fuck the RIAA, we have pirated MP3s on our site"? When does it become a problem of the media provider? Is Exodus (Andover.net's ISP) responsible for the MP3s? Should they be sanitizing the bits at the router? Monitoring for Brittany Spears patterns in the HTTP traffic?
You begin a long and slippery slide the way that the RIAA is going. The only thing I think they can justify is pressing charges against the people trading the music and getting a warrant for the logs on the Napster servers. If there's anything there that identifies users, then they could be busted. The problem is that that would mean directly going after thousands of mostly kids. Can you imagine how pissed their parents will be? How long before that turns into an anti-RIAA backlash that could cost the RIAA millions in legal fees? All for what? To punish fans who tend to be good customers in the first place? No, RIAA wants to shut Napster down so that they look like bad-guys only in the short-term and concentrate their legal guns on a single, easy target.
Welcome to copyright in THIS century.
YOU SAID: "Trading MP3's online is no different to recording a bunch of songs from the radio or TV shows/movies and letting your friends have copies of those recordings. Its illegal...." Hold on my friend.... You are incorrect. It is legal for you to share your recordings with friends and family. You can make digital mp3s or analog cassette tapes, but these recordings can not be apart of any commercial setting. Of course, the law was written back in 1989. In the year 2000, your friends live all over the world thanks to the Internet. So, is it any more wrong for you to share your digital recordings with a friend in Europe than it is with your friend next door? Of course not. That's the whole point of this. The law is outdated, ambiguous, and it is restricting the entire digital entertainment industry. The law must be changed in order for progress to be made. Look at MP3.com. They are slowly settling lawsuit after lawsuit from the big 5 record companies. 4 down and god only knows how many more will come in the end. The law was made in hopes of protecting the music and film industries from piracy, but it was not written to limit the growth of a new economic sector and to give monopoly-like powers to the RIAA. So write senator Hatch and tell him that he is the man!
Check this out...the bitches only cost 65p each! (minimum order 1000) , it's the same with concert tickets, here it says 34% goes to the band, although this varies wildly depending on the source - some say up to 60%.
;)
Did someone say "MP3 is giving greedy bastards their comeuppance?"
I did, just then
jh
"Education is the perpetual realisation of our ignorance"
I finally get it!
I never understood why someone would try to leverage a "cute little file sharing app" into an empire - after all, most people would [free,share]ware it and maybe show it off at job interviews.
But now I realize that it was a brilliant plan to get gullible VC's to foot the bill for the inevitable legal battles! And get some cool servers and some marteking money for free concerts to boot!
Instead of being a small, independent software vendor getting legally reamed by the RIAA, this guy raised more dough than the EFF to fight this file sharing issue in court!
I thought he was petty, greedy and stupid, but now I realize that he has a buiness accumen and genius that I can only begin to comprehend.
- bridgette
--
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
--
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
Napster, the application, is not on trial here. The service is not on trial.. the COMPANY is.
The COMPANY is attempting to make money using their serivce. The put up such service, *knowing* that it would be popular *only* because it would be used primarily to help joe average user share his pirated files with someone else. Something that joe average did *not know how to easily do*.
Therefore, napster is in business to help people pirate. Plain and simple.
Sure, people had FTP sites and such... but napster provided a forum.
Is the tool illegal? No. Is the company breaking the law? I'm starting to think so.
The studies did NOTHING to prove a causation, ie: Napster usage CAUSED the people to buy more CDs. It just proved a correlation, ie: people who use Napster buy more CDs than those who don't.
= pr000721
http://www.jup.com/company/pressrelease.jsp?doc
Thank you.
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
And.. if the public is not willing to pay for music anymore, and are just going to rip it off.. then there is *NO LONGER A MARKET FOR POP MUSICIANS*. SO your buddy might have to get another job.
You cannot force the public to pay.
Napster should pull up stakes, move their machines to Sealand, and put up a big flag that says: "Down with the RIAA." I doubt the RIAA can muster the kind of military might it will take to defeat the indomitable Prince Roy!
This argument only holds up if Napster use CAUSES more sales. Really, all we know is that Napster users are also record buyers, but the arrow of causation could point the other way -- that record buyers are more likely to use Napster.
It could be shown that Napster users buy a more-than-average number of records in the first place, and that Napster is causing them to buy fewer than they would, although still more than average.
People buy more CD's after having used Napster than they did before, after controlling for all major demographic factors.
To quote from Jupiter Communications' press release detailing their report: "When we conducted our consumer survey, controlled for key music purchasing factors-such as existing spending level, age, income, gender, and online tenure-we still found that Napster usage is one of the strongest determinants of increased music buying." (emphasis added)
Meanwhile, the only study the RIAA can point to is one which shows that sales at "college record stores" are going down. Unfortunately, this brain-dead excuse for a study miraculously fails to take into account purchases made at online record stores like CDNow!! This despite the fact that college students are always at the leading-edge of adoption of online phenomena, including online shopping.
Oh yeah--and the RIAA's report shows that sales at "college record stores" dropped more in the year before Napster came out than the year since!
So basically, the available evidence if pretty conclusive that so far, Napster has increased CD sales over what they otherwise would have been.
But it still doesn't prove whether a persons CD buying goes up or down due to Napster...The studies are shit, basically. They don't prove a damn thing.
Wrong.
When you forward the email, all that is forwarded is the text and the link to the file. The file itself remains in the same one spot -- so you can forward the email to 100 different people (and BCC it as well). It's like a huge warez FTP, only you're forced to use a horrible interface.
When I was on AOL in 1996 (yes, there was such a time) there were automated "mail server" programs that would use the WinAPI to simulate clicks on AOL's buttons and forward lists of available files and the files themselves to anyone who asked for them in a chat room.
I'd wager that this hasn't changed much today.
--
The only digital-media distribution systems that make sense are RMS's tax-based proposal, the Street Performer Protocol, and the electronic tip jar. All of these schemes share two traits:
- they don't prevent people from copying a digital work and not paying
- over 90% of the money that the customer pays or gives in these schemes goes directly to the artist
The RIAA would rather have a scheme that:- includes some form of copy protection or watermarking
- maximizes the baksheesh that record companies can get from the blockbusters they push
I think they're going after a chimera, but the people running the RIAA have a powerful incentive to believe otherwise.--
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
1. 30 seconds of a track usually dosn't help much. Listen to Orbital's Halcyon + on + on sometime. A 30 second cut isn't much of a representation.
why not call tower records and see if they have it in their listening stations?
2. I'm about am hour drive away from a record store with listening stations. Now what should I do?
why not go to a friend's house and listen to it
3. Easy, I have no friends.
gnutella might not have the sex appeal of Napster but gnutella is far more useful.
We already have a 'free as in beer' music distribution system, and have had for a long time, its called radio. The record companies fought radio back in the early days, until they realized that radio airplay actually increases record sales rather than decreasing it. Perhaps if Napster wants to exist as a commercial entity and be supported by advertising as radio is, then they should work out a system whereby artists are paid royalties similar to the way that ASCAP and BMI work.
As for most musicians being able to make a living, it is already true that most can't do it through music. Signed artists are the lucky few. Most musicians make their money by 'stealing' from signed musicians by playing cover versions of well known songs in bars, at parties, etc w/o paying royalties. Napster probably won't significantly change that one way or the other. A few non-signed artists may actually benefit from being able to do an end-run around the record company's AR men.
Crosland said hundreds of thousand of restaurants and bars pay ASCAP an annual fee - which varies widely but averages about $200 to $600 -- for permission to play any of the more than 4 million songs it has in its repertory.
Could there be flat fee licensing to consumers, say $20 to $60 per year, for digital access of 4 million songs?
Though this question is kindof off-topic, the article makes an interesting read on the interpretation of United States Copyright Law (Title 17, United States Code).
I don't think I can really blame the RIAA for filing suit with Napster and all the other internet startups that distribute music in the Napster fashion (i.e. through a central server indexing all of the users' files). I mean, really, these companies are out there to make money, and they are making money off of other people's copyrighted work.
Wouldn't any Slashdotter be pissed if their favorite GPL software was downloaded by Microsoft, "extended", and released as a proprietary product, without the sourcecode or anything?
Maybe that is an imperfect analogy, but I can't think of a better one right now.
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
Quit your whining and use the TOM Conversion Service. It'll let you read any "non-standard" format you want, including Word, PDF, and even LaTeX, in nice, comfortable HTML format. Of course, the formatting will likely be all fouled up because HTML doesn't support all the layout features of PDF, but that's okay because standards are more important than everything else.
Quick, stop the world because Joe Websurfer can't read our documents!
For more information, click here.
Heh. Napster makes Microsoft executives look like Saints.
After reading this RIAA brief in it's entirety, they are pissed, and I would say rightfully so.
It's beyond a point where the music industry is going to be willing to work with Napster. This isn't a questionable offense against the business like mymp3.com, this is blatant abuse.
What Napster is doing is unethical, immoral and easily illegal. Napster knows this, and apparently doesn't care and has said so in it's internal documents.
I would have to predict that Napster is going down, they will be shut down and out of business in six months time.
Another important thing to keep in mind, is that alternatives such as gnutella are just going to make Internet regulation worse. If they become a problem, the music industry will come down on them hard as well. It won't be a namsy pansy court case like this DeCSS thing either, it will be a consorted effort.
And if you think it's difficult to do, all they have to do is lobby for Congressional legislation. Warrants for the arrest and confiscation of computers running napster like software will be next.
Don't think this will happen? You just watch.
This is kind of backwards logic. The only reason the GPL needs to exist is _because_ of copyright. If copyright didn't exist, we wouldn't need to worry about someone taking a free work and making proprietary, becuase proprietary works would have no protection under the law. I'm not saying this would neccesarily be a good thing, but you can't justify copyright by saying it's neccessary for the GPL. That's like saying criminals are good, becuase without them we wouldn't need police.
--Matt
These guys are in it as a business and are trying to get money. I'm sure the original kid wanted something different, but too bad he gave ALL control over to the suits.
I don't have the exact facts as to what position the inventor has in the company (you can check a /. article from last week if you want it), but I know he has pretty much no control.
IANAL, but I play one on
Although I cannot stand the RIAA, the more I think about it something just seems wrong about Napster making a profit off of someone elses work.
Like, oh let's see, Amazon.com? Yahoo? Ebay?
If those studies about Napster users buying MORE music than the average consumer are true then there is nothing wrong with Napster making money on providing a service.
If Napster was not doing this is for profit, then it would be an easier case for me. But with Napster doing this as a business, it seems fair that the record companies should get a cut; even if they don't really deserve any more money.
If the information that I referred to earlier is accurate, then the RIAA and the individual record companies ARE getting a cut. They benefit fromNapster's use.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
It seems so obvious to /.'ers, but the RIAA still seems to miss this point. If I were in the recording industry, I'd be looking ahead as many years as I could to see which way the market is going. I'd be trying to anticipate the market and be an early adopter to collect the marvelous profits that accompany such adoption, done well.
There are now about 5 years of experience out there of moving retail sales to the internet. Electronic-format books and music are lagging because they're worried that the cat will be let out of the bag when they distribute online. But the cat is out already for the RIAA member companies! Every wasted minute is lost profit! You'd think that they'd see Napster's user stats as a potential market that turned to piracy because they were ignored, and act to supply that market.
Again, from the RIAA's perspective, having affordable digital distribution running when they sue Napster would also solve many of their PR problems. "See?" they could say, "you can get what you want for $x per song from us, you pirates!"
The RIAA are handling this in the wrong way, even from the perspective of their own self-interest.
SteveHere's a thought -- the RIAA's not staffed with fools, methinks. Even the most blinded sycophant would have to come to the realization that while Napster may go away, MP3s will not -- and neither will the method by which MP3s can be transmitted (i.e. the Internet)
The RIAA has been around long enough (and the record industry as well) to know how this will go. They'll fight, bitch and moan, but the end result will be the new technology catching on.
Napster's a red herring -- look for something more sinister than "Burn the Napster witch!" Napster fights for its survival, on whatever front that may appear. The RIAA is looking for something else from this.
I don't know what it is, but I suspect that they are looking for a definitive intellectual property ruling -- one that will make digital music more controllable. Remember silver certificates? You were supposed to turn those in back in the 60's, I believe. The government asked for you to return them, and in return, they give you paper money from the Federal Reserve -- no longer backed by silver.
Do I think the RIAA has something of that magnitude cooking on the back burner? No, but the concept I'm sure gives some of the top brass massive erections.
Watch this case carefully. RIAA hasn't tipped their hand yet -- don't get blinded by the piteous cries of Napster screaming "foul!" There will be more...
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Guess what? Money laundering is still illegal.
Yes, but the Pizza Parlor is not.
It would be trivial for Napster to prevent transferring illegally stolen music: simply prevent transferring any file with a valid MP3 header. This would give a few false positives, of course, but I think that's Judge Patel's (and the RIAA's) point: Napster created a monster (Patel's words), and now it is their burden to control it. If there is no effective way to filter out the illegaly stolen music (as there isn't with today's technology), then the only way Napster would not be guilty of contributory copyright infringement is to pull the plug on the services all together.
But yeah - there are copyright laws in place. There are remedies when copyright is infringed. Go after the infringers, and make BIG examples of them.
I do wonder if this is going to turn into the War on Drugs of the 21st century, though....
---
The RIAA may be looking out for the interests of its musicians, but that is only a side effect, or a front, depending on how you look at it. What they are really looking out for is the interests of their corporate music publishing members, who take a much larger chunk of every dollar, peso, pound, mark, franc, or ruble spent on CDs.
Much of that pays for CD manufacturing, distribution, marketing, and so on, and the associated profits realized to the owners of that business. That in itself is not evil. But the internet is clearly going to make that aspect of music less important (if not eventually obsolete). We just won't need that in the future, but the RIAA and its members are indeed struggling to keep hold of their revenue sources amidst all this change.
One thing of interest to note is that a great deal of investment is made by the music industry to get an unknown name artist started. What the internet now does is make that cost virtually disappear.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Anyone else find that highly bizarre? Apparently, under the Audio Home Recording Act, 'digital recordings' are protected but computers are not 'digital audio recording' devices. Furthermore, Diamond managed to beat RIAA by PT Barnuming the court into believing that mp3s are NOT "digital musical recordings".
RIAA now claims that, because mp3s are not "digital musical recordings", the AHRA does not protect mp3.
mp3 is obviously digital, or it couldn't be stored as bits on a CD. So, if mp3s aren't "musical recordings", how is the copyright being violated?
88
Those studies you refer to prove nothing. They simply state the obvious: many people who use Napster are music buffs, and are inclined to buy more CDs than non-music buffs.
.sig again.
The studies did NOTHING to prove a causation, ie: Napster usage CAUSED the people to buy more CDs. It just proved a correlation, ie: people who use Napster buy more CDs than those who don't.
Until a study is done proving that Napster is the CAUSE of this increase in CD sales, your argument there means jack shit. Perhaps you should read your own
-[Blaine]- "'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic."
The Napster lawsuit is only one example of a disturbing trend in America -- that of "legislation by civil suit".
Basically, we have reached the point of law saturation. The average American cannot go through a day without breaking some sort of law. As a result, we no longer even try. Want to hear a bit of Metallica before deciding to buy the album? Fine -- download a song or two off Napster.
Of course, you've just broken the law. No matter how innocent your intentions, you are a criminal.
When we reach this point, people begin to have a lack of respect for the law. We KNOW not to commit murder. We KNOW not to steal. But when you tell me that I'm a crook for trying to be an informed consumer, well how am I supposed to respond?
This is where we are today. Laws no longer effectively control people's behavior. There are just too many to keep track of.
How do you control people's behavior now? Simple -- attack the people providing the means. Hit them in their pocketbooks. It doesn't matter that the providers are not directly responsible for breaking any law. The goal is to stop the behavior you don't like by any means necessary.
Want more examples than Napster? Look at the lawsuits against the tobacco industry. Look at lawsuits against ISPs for the actions of their clients. The ISP is just providing a service. The tobacco industry is just giving people their legal drug of choice.
Beware. This trend will continue. Napster is only a footnote in a brave new world of de facto legislation by corporate interests and politicians who can't get their pet laws passed the right way.
The real DunkPonch is user 215121. Everyone else is Bruce Perens.
I have my own small MP3 collection which I ripped from my own CD's, which I play on my own computer, and I'd always assumed that most Napster users were like my little brother, who wants to grab some popular, cool tunes so he can hear them on RealJukebox (which he also grabbed for free and doesn't necessarily care how Real, Inc. uses his personal information). So today I downloaded Napster and clicked through the regular encyclopaedic licenses.
Or, at least, I tried to. This time a message popped up that said, "You must read the entire license agreement before clicking OK!" So I did. After the regular legalese protecting Napster, Inc. should my lawn mower run over my neighbor, etc., there's this tidbit:
Unauthorized copying, distribution, modification, public display, or public performance of copyrighted works is an infringement of the copyright holders' rights. [...] As a condition to the license to use the SOFTWARE, you agree that you will not use the SOFTWARE or the Napster service to infringe the intellectual property rights of others in any way. (bold added)
So basically, if I'm to abide by the Napster license, I'm not supposed to download or distribute any copyrighted works over which I have no authorization. This seems straightforward enough. But does anyone take this seriously? Does anyone ACTUALLY believe that Napster users are NOT downloading or distributing works for which they don't have authorization? Apparently not the first 100 people that I got a hit for when I searched for a favorite song of mine.
So what this is really about, then, is 20 million people infringing on an entire industry by stealing that industry's copyrighted works. As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter if it's an evil industry. It doesn't matter whether Courtney Love can write a moving diatribe against it. This isn't Robin Hood vs. the Sherrif of Nottingham. This is nothing more than people convienently deluding themselves into the ethics of self-interest.
(Apologies for the excessive use of bold. Yes, I did mean it.)
--
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
Napster is causing a vast number of consumers to believe that free music on the internet is an entitlement.
/. fairly well.
That seems to sum up the view of the Jon Katz contingent on
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
...they would just print those damn .mp3's onto a T-Shirt...
M$: "We're #2!"
Am I the only one who's noticed that, regardless of what happens to Napster, UNAUTHORIZED DISTRIBUTION OF COPYRIGHTED CONTENT IS NEVER GOING TO GO AWAY?
Jesus F. Christ! It's not going to go away no matter what happens! Why don't people figure out how to DEAL WITH IT instead of whining about morality and law? God, this is getting annoying.
And to forestall those of you who would demand an answer from me, here it is: Unauthorized distribution of copyrighted content (let's call it UDCC -- I have trouble equating murder and robbery on the high seas with downloading "Enter Sandman") is going to happen no matter what. So people who don't want it to happen should provide a reasonable alternative for the consumer. Ideally, it would be some kind of system where people can download compressed digital audio (MP3 or Ogg Vorbis or something) for something as cheap as 99 cents a pop. Heck, there already ARE lots of sites like this; what if ALL the big labels did it?
This is of course dependent on a few things:
- There has to be an easy and secure way for people to pay for these things.
- A large segment of all music has to be made available. If it's only 10% of what I can find at the local music store, then screw it! I'll go buy the CD.
- It has to be easy to use, portable, and transmittable between devices. (If I download one of these songs, I had damn well better be able to copy it onto my Rio or other portable digital music player.) This pretty much throws out using any kind of encryption. (Digital watermarking or something like that, if it doesn't interfere with the music, is fine by me.)
"But," you say, "everyone will just download it once, copy it, and give it to all their friends!" You know what? No, they won't, for the same reason that all software sold in this country isn't pirated. (China is another matter.) Quite a lot of people buy software, because they want things like original CDs, manuals, and even the nice shiny box that gives you a warm feeling just to look at. Downloading an authorized copy of a song is always going to appeal to those with a certain sense of morality, or just the desire to support the artists they like. (Once nice benefit -- hopefully -- of a system like this is that the artists get a much larger share of the pie, as opposed to the RIAA, who can all shrivel and die for all I care.)Seriously, would everyone quit bitching about how immoral/illegal it is? Just focus on what IS GOING TO HAPPEN.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
>"Napster is causing a vast number of consumers
>to believe that free music on the Internet is
>an entitlemant."
... which is a flat out lie. The notion of "if it's on the internet then you're free to use it" did *NOT* originate from Napster.
For the VAST majority of its existence (most of which predates Napster (and, for that matter, the web)), the "internet culture" has been one of shareing. If there was something on the net that was pretty nifty, and you saw a use for it, you were perfectly free to grab a copy and put it to (fair) use, or if it was GPL software, modify it and redistribute. Hell, I taught myself HTML and javascript by surfing the web, and if a page did something I thought was cool, viewing the source and shamelessly learning from the original. That was a much better way (for me) to learn than any HTML book I've run across. And there was never any real problem with this, because if you wanted any cred, you recriprocated by uploading anything YOU do, just in case someone else thinks it's nifty, and someone ELSE might like it.
And there was never any problem with that. The whole point of the net was to share data. (well, okay, originally the whole point was to survive a nuclear attack, but the most common (post DARPA(whose involvement in what is NOW known as the internet was rathar short))use was shareing of knowledge).
It wasn't until VERY recently that giant corperate monoliths such as the RIAA noticed the net, and decided to turn it into their own private playground. They want to destroy the old, free, permissive, sharing culture, impose a meatspace culture on it, and turn it into nothing more than one more marketing demographic.
OF COURSE there is going to be a culture clash.
But to claim that Napster just came along to a perfectly controlled, orderly, on-line marketplace, and just suddenly declared "if it's on the net it's free", is pure FUD, plain and simple. That culture was always there. It's the RIAA who is the uninvited interloper trying to destroy a culture, *NOT* Napster.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Imagine all the people...
if we boycott one but not the other, or neither, that makes US unethical.
however one (read: I) could argue that ethics arent' really useful.
Copyright laws were originally created to prevent corperations from stealing musicians / authors /etc work without just compensation. This works well in book publiishing where copyrights revert back to the author after the first printing. Unfortunatly, the RIAA labels make musicians selll them the copyright outright. I think the only way that traditional music distribution could be fair to artists would be to make it illegal to transfer a copyright away from the original orner, i.e. the labels would only have the rights to a single printing of an album, then it would be the authors. Unfortunatly, the above legal reform seems impossible considering the RIAA's power in cogress.
Now, if you can not fix the laws legally then you should fix them illegally. Musicians like Courtney Love feal that they would make more money if they fans just donated money to them and ignored the record industry---Fairtunes and Upriser are ting to implement a system which allows exactly this. Ideally, people would stop buying CDs and start giving money to artists directly which would totally screw the RIAA labels, thus allowing the artists to broker more benificial deals with their labels.
I think Ms. Love's strategy is a good one. It might work or it might not work, but it seems to be the only real option available to today musicians.. when your getting fucked over bad enough by the establisment then it's time to set fire to the establishment and hope the new order is more to your liking.
BTW> Napster is very very bad since it wants to replace the RIAA's strangle hold on musicians by monopolising the distribution of online music, so we should all try to get people to use diffrent file sharing systems.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I'd be scared anytime someone invokes precedent from a $cientology case to back up their argument. Creepy.
-Vercingetorix
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
The RIAA's arguments here are really no different
then they were before. They are simply being
more elaborate. I expect Napster to do the same,
this is just a big game.
What some readers here don't realize is that this is a game which will determine the future for these technologies to some extent, at least for
US citizens. Both sides are lying and using underhanded tactics, although the RIAA tries
to appear to do so less then Napster, it is the
same thing.
Vote for the RIAA if you are part of their system. Vote for Napster if you like MP3s. That's about all there is to it. Everyone is lying to you,
Napster has their own commercial agendas which
if they were able to follow I bet would make them just as nasty as the RIAA.
The precedent that needs to be set is whether it is legal for people to share music. Well, is it legal ONLINE...... The Net is a new avenue for commerce, and the good 'ol boys are not going to let the control fall into the hands of the users....
Fight for what you think is right,
My opinion is that Napster should win, not out of any respect for the company, but rather for the ability to share music without breaking US law.
This law also sets precedent in other countries that follow international copyright treaties. Beware.
Regardless, Napster could just filter and stop transmission of copyrighted works via their system (unless they have permission to distribute the works).
er, and just exactly how would they go about doing such a thing? nothing differentiates a copyrighted string of bytes from a non-copyrighted string of bytes.
you couldn't even use the file name, because i can still misname them, or give them names like "m3t4ll1c4 - f4d3 t0 bl4ck.mp3"
not that easy.
anthony
"I think any time you expose vulnerabilities it's a good thing." -Attorney General Janet Reno
But you cannot shut down all pizza parlors because they can be used for money laundering.
Perhaps you meant to construct an argument instead of introducing a logical fallacy.
How much is 'serious money'? I'd pay a small amount for each mp3 I downloaded. I'm just waiting for an efficiant way to do it.
Sure, without the media exposure the publishers can generate less musicions will become millioners but more of them will make a decent living. I'm all for flattening the money distribution curve a little bit.
Nowhere is it written that rock stars get to make millions of dolars.
I agree with you, and I wonder whether you can push the reasoning further. If you can prove that the RIAA is losing less money than napster (and other MP3 sharing methods) is making them lose, then you might have a point in proving that it is in fact a malicious lawsuit against napster and not about money. The purpous of the lawsuit being to preserve its monopoly on music. BTW, aren't there laws in the US about cartels? AFAIK the RIAA is a cartel.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
All in all, it's a fairly compelling document. I'm not terribly sure how ethically or legally right Napster is. Napster does maintain a database of copyright protected music with the intent to profit (in some nebulous way) from it. But the document still has some interesting thoughts from the RIAA. Some gems include:
Oh my, how dare anyone attempt to "usurp" or "undermine" the record industry and replace it with something else! How dare Napster view copyright schemes as combersome and avoid being hindered by them! How else will the RIAA enjoy it's God given right to make money. Feh. Anyone seriously attempting to change how music is distributed, even with great respect for copyright, will attempt to "usurp" the record industry. Such a company could quite reasonably view record stores as obsolete. This is in no way grounds to take Napster down.
It's nice to know that if you're an artist not involved in the case, you're "commercially insignificant" and as such not deserving of the right to use Napster to distribute your music.
All is not lost, since the RIAA the RIAA generously gives Napster a way to continue hosting files:
(Don't be misled by the "For example", it's the only example they give. The only other options I can see are ineffective lists of prohibited titles or requirining "hindering" copyright protection technology.)
So, if you get a tape from a non-internet saavy friend musician who encourages you to make copies for anyone you want, you couldn't put it onto Napster without getting Napster some official form of authorization. If sending an email saying "I own this and I authorize it" is enough, it will be trivial to forge emails granting permission for the RIAA catalogs. If some sort of proof is required, it becomes an onerous burden for the copyright holder.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
This argument only holds up if Napster use CAUSES more sales. Really, all we know is that Napster users are also record buyers, but the arrow of causation could point the other way -- that record buyers are more likely to use Napster.
It could be shown that Napster users buy a more-than-average number of records in the first place, and that Napster is causing them to buy fewer than they would, although still more than average. Then Napster would be hurting potential sales.
I don't at all know what the truth of the matter is, but the stat that Napster users buy more music than the average consumer is interesting, but really doesn't at all speak to whether Napster use causes more or fewer sales.
--
My copy of the Oxford English Dictonary traces the use of the word piracy in the sense of presenting someone elses work as your own or as an unauthroized reporduction as dating back to the 17th century.
I know RMS has his own little agenda, but don't look foolish by saying that by properly using the term piracy you are equating something with kidnap and murder. Words can have multiple meanings, you know?
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
You appear to have missed the point, perhaps because you didn't read the RIAA brief.
They make specific mention of this supposed benefit, and they point out correctly that it is irrelevant. The RIAA never asked Napster to advertise for them, they certainly never gave them permission to advertise in the way they have. What the RIAA is arguing is that if this form of theft is not stopped, it will impact financially those companies who are working to provide legitimate business plans because people will expect full copies of music for free.
The GPL has nothing to do with this. The GPL is something you buy into, you have a choice in what you do with your creation.
What Napster is doing, essentially, is saying "Hey wow, there is a whole lot of stuff out there people have created... Let's force them to make it public domain."
The rest of your argument seems to be a rather lame attempt to justify theft to yourself.
If you drive the getaway car, you're still responsible for the crime even though you didn't rob the bank.
"But Your Honor, I was just driving a car -- a perfectly legal activity! I had nothing to do with my passengers who just happened to rob a bank!
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
They are right - using Napster harms the artist.
Napster harms them, they own the artist. That's the only way napster harms artists. This distintion is important since "they" have also helped make laws, that a)turn musical works into "works for hire" meaning the artist can never regain their copyright, b)remove the right of an artist to get out of a contract (which gave up their copyright) when declaring bankrupty, and c)extending copyright beyond the lifetime of your average person.
So yea, they are fighting for their life. Fuck'em. This is an issue of control. And they couldn't care less if Napster, Gnutella, whatever, is making money or not. They specifically amended copyright in '98, so that is not a consideration.
--
+&x
First, there would be public domain code. All open source projects would fall into this category. This code would be open, available, and owned nobody and controlled by noone. Anyone could use this code for any purpose.
Second, there would be code that nobody ever sees. Individuals and organizations who wanted to produce closed-source software would have to shield, obscure, and otherwise protect their code with contracts, usage licenses, and security.
The big difference would be that the public domain code would have no protection whatsoever from being absorbed by closed-source projects. There would be no protection for programmers who wished to enforce their choice of open source development on others.
In a world without copyright (and therefore no GPL) there would be nothing to prevent Microsoft from using any and all of the Linux kernel code in their own closed-source products. Without copyright protection, if your code was open, it would have to be public domain.
It is copyright law, and nothing else, that gives the GPL its teeth. Don't believe for a minute that the lack of copyright protection will somehow eliminate all closed-source software. The truth is, without the protection of copyright, there's no middle ground and we'd see less, not more open-source code.
Anyone who was around and using software in the late seventies and early eighties knows exactly what the software world would look like without copyright. Back when nobody knew what "software" meant, it was very unclear exactly how much protection copyright offered for software. Copyright law took several years to mature and adapt to the computer revolution and during that period the growing pains were sharp and harsh.
Would we really want to return to the days of dongles, hardware copy protection, usage contracts, and burdensome licenses? Without copyright, that's what software houses would have to fall back upon to protect their intellectual property. It wasn't until copyright established itself in the software world that we were finally able to move past those cumbersome and ineffecient methods.
If this concept bothers you, ask yourself why? The foundation of the GPL is that programmers should have the right to dictate how their code is used. If you accept the GPL, you accept that a programmer has an inherent right of control over their code that they can then be able to say "this code should never be used in a closed-source program".
How is it that programmers should have this right and musicians should not? Why should software have protections that music should not? Shouldn't a musician have the same degree of control and be able to say "this song shouldn't be made freely available"?
In many ways, the parrellel between the industries is perfect.
To this date, millions (is not hundred of millions, I don't have the numbers) of people have died from cigarettes. How many artists died from copyright infringements? They sure lost a couple bucks, but there is a huge difference between the two. Also, if you want to push the analogy, note that the cigarette companies are still in buisness, while napster might be out of buisness soon.
Now, I cannot predict the verdict, but let's assume that napster is illegal. It can mean two things: "napster is bad" or "the laws need to be changed". Sure the RIAA has the (legal) right to defend their copyright, but sometimes "legal right" != "moral right". What might have started with napster (actually, maybe even before) is a movement of civil disobeissance (OK, I'm french!). It's the equivalent of a small revolution against the RIAA dictatorchip (I'm talking musical dictatorship). You might be for or against napster, but ultimate point here is not "is napster legal", but about "what should be legal in the future".
At last, I'd like to add (though this is not new) that the "the artists are losing money" is not really valid, since most artists (all but the very popular/rich ones) make almost no mony from sold CD's anyway. For them CD's are not about direct money, but about being known and making money with their shows. The problem is that the RIAA is using its monopoly on CD's to "force" the artists to agree to their rules (giving up their copyright to the RIAA), because the RIAA controls the radios which are the only way artists get known.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
The RIAA completely ignores the argument that napster can be used for discovering new music because they don't want people to discover new music. They want people to buy their britney spears crap. They don't want people to know there are other kinds of music which are not produced by major labels
Why doesn't anyone seem to understand that? They perfectly know that no one steals from them and that napster helps them sell more CD, the problem is that they don't help only them, they also help all the "underground" labels.
Copyright is important, but most important is that the purpose to which copyright is put should be agreed upon. The GPL makes a perfect use of Copyright in order to force a particular work to remain free and allow sharing. This is a good use of a currently half-broken system. Using copyright as a reason to prevent people from sharing anything without paying a sum (any sum) to a large organization is not a good use of the system.
From my understanding (by no means complete), Copyright was created as a method to allow a creator to benefit from their work without being abused by various unscrupulous publishers. If that is the case, then it is not achieving that goal. In this case, it's being used by the (often unscrupulous) publishers to abuse the recipients of the work (that's us, the fans), forcing them at the same time to pay homage. If you really think this is right, then by all means stand up for the RIAA. If you think that creation, creativity, and sharing are more important than corporate profit, then seek action to correct the current copyright system. Become as informed as possible. Put in your voice and let those who make these decisions know what is right, and what you want them to do about it. You have the power to change things for better or for worse.
I hope you decide to change it for the better, or get the heck out of the way because a minor revolution is coming and if you stand for the wrong side you may just get trampled on.
Anonymous Cowards: Proving daily that human beings are innately jerks.
They began stealing from the public when they expanded copyright from anything reasonable, when they declared war on fair use copying, and when they have such a monopoly on distribution that artists have no choice but to sign over their rights
The guerrela warfare reaction is the public's response to corporate theft.
It might be technically illegal to break into my neighbor's house to steal something, but if that something was originally stolen from me, and the neighbor has bought off the police so I can't get it back, then technicalities be damned, I have the moral right to retrieve it.
The RIAA have stolen my public domain rights, and stolen artists' rights, and they are suffering the consequences.
Did you see the news about Louis Prima's estate and Disney? Disney says that even though they pay royalties for audio recordings of The Jungle Book, they don't owe royalties on video recordings, even though there is an audio track, because the contract didn't specifically mention the new technologies.
Do you *still* claim the congolmerates have any rights? Do you *still* claim they protect artists?
--
Infuriate left and right
All I can say in response to that is a recent study found:
* 100% people who smoked - even for one day - have died or will die.
I'd say that's pretty damning if you ask me!
The problem with Gnutella is the porn. Alot of Napster users are kids, and their parents dont really care if they are downloading illegal music, but you better believe they will flip when they see the porn adds next to the music listings on Gnutella. Napsters one saving grace was that it was only used for music. The more general utilities are going to be cursed by their openness
The media conglomerates have abused the copyright system. They have stretched it far beyond any reasonable interpretation of being for the public good. It used to be 14 years plus a 14 year extension, now it's 75 years after the author dies. They want to stop fair use. If anyone proposed libraries today, they would scream about copyright infringement.
In other words, they are stealing from the public, using the force of the government to back them up. This has nothing to do with artists' rights and everything to do with theft from the public domain.
They have declared war on the public, and the public is fighting back in the only way possible. The public has overreacted, but the RIAA started the war. When the powerful push the weak too far, the weak fight back in the only way possible. Like the Brits prior to the American Revolution, there comes a time when the oppressed have had enough, and after all these years of overpriced overpadded CDs, the consumers are reacting.
The future involves priceless distribution. The RIAA can no more stop it than King Canute could stop the tide. The RIAA would be better off getting in bed with Napster than trying to kill them, but they are so short sighted they don't see it. They will die.
On another take, how much do you really think the conglomerates are actually losing? Your little brother -- how many of those tunes could he have actually bought? That's the only cost. You can't say he has 100 CD equivalents and that's how much they lost.
--
Infuriate left and right
Trace the theft. At what point in my downloading a song an artist did not agree to did I deny someone property? My crime is copyright infringement which is not theft. If it was theft, then in the legal briefs filed, Napster would be accused of abetting in theft not in assisting piracy (using definition #2, not #1).
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
That is not the point. Napster is making money off of somebody else's product without providing any sort of payment for the use of that product. If I ran a site where people could download scans of textbooks--for which I made a profit--don't you think the publishers would be annoyed?
The RIAA might be making money out of the whole deal with increased sales of records, but if you don't protect your property, you might lose it. Napster is also guilty of some double-standards (thatr have been discussed on slashdot), so I have a hard time feeling sorry for them. Remember that lousy music group they sued for trademark infringement after the group started selling clothing with the Napster logo? Napster might get more visitors when people saw the illegal shirts, but Napster sent off their own cease-and-desist letter....
I will probably be misunderstood :-( so I will amplify a bit.
I don't mean it's ok to download the mp3 instead of buying the CD, and I don't mean it;s ok to install AutoCAD in lieu of paying. For instance, if someone installs AutoCAD because they want the "best", instead of buying a cheaper competitor, then there is a real loss, although not to AutoCAD. If someone buys a harddisk and fills it with mp3 instead of buying the CDs, there is a real loss, and to the artist.
My point is that most of what the RIAA calls theft is no such thing because there is no monetary loss, or any loss whatsoever, because the hundreds of mp3s downloaded by starving college students are not in lieu of buying a CD. I doubt the actual monetary loss is more than 1%. I bet it is compensated for by people like me who use mp3s to find interesting music and buy the CD. I doubt the RIAA wants to bring either of these factors into the equation.
--
Infuriate left and right
But then again it's not really that simple. Consider fair use - that means that if I buy a CD, then there is the understanding that I not only have bought the CD but also a copy for myself in whatever form I like.
That is a side argument though and not relevant to my point. I'll restate in a slightly different way what I was trying to get across - that by releasing a performance to the public (that includes live performances) an artist implicitly UNDERSTANDS that anyone can have it for the cost of duplication.
They may not AGREE with those who do not pay for it. They may not WANT it to be copied. All that is irrelivant however in that they KNOW it is possible to copy it, and therfore it CAN be had for the cost of duplication.
Again, I say that given what you know, you have to be an idiot to think you can keep making money that way and should be looking for viable alternitives. I'd like to see the artists get as much as possible for performances, to maximise profit for the performer - that does not happen under the current system.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Music from an artist is essentially free in that if they do not want people copying the music, they only way to really stop that at this point is to not play it, or keep it locked away from people entirely. By performaing the music at all, by placing that music in the public, they have implicitly stated that anyone can have it for the cost of duplication.
They have said no such thing. When an artist releases something on CD, it's with the impicit understanding that if you want to own a copy of that song, you will buy the CD.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
Quoting Claude Raines from Casablanca..
"I'm shocked... shocked..."
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Nothing you can know that isn't known
Nothing you can see that isn't shown
Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be
It's easy
C'mon, everybody sing it with me now!
All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need.
That about covers it. There is indeed nothing you can say, but you can learn how to play the game.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Compare this to RIAA's reply to Napsters answer to the Motion for Preliminary Injunction and other earlier documents. It has always been Napster's side of the story that the Supreme Court didn't mean what they wrote in Sony, and that Napster have been evil sly dogs.
It has always been Napster's view that the law is on their side. As a lawyer, I'm more likely to buy the hypertechnical defenses on behalf of Napster, but hey, that's just me. The District Court was moved by the "hey, they're taking everything for free" rhetoric, and the few cracks of light they could pull out of Sony.
Time will tell how the 9th Circuit feels about the matter. In the meanwhile, I didn't see anything really new in this brief at first glance.
It's a pathetic display when companies and organizations go through what Napster and the RIAA are going through. A settlement will obviously never happen, which really makes me curious as to what 20 million pissed off ex-napster users are gonna do when the RIAA gets its way...
Look, I dislike the English as much as the next guy... but the fact is, clippers are used mostly (not exclusively) to pirate tea, and that's bad. Yes, the King needs to see the writing on the wall that representation is the way to go and that He can't gouge colonists. But that doesn't mean that John Paul and the rest of those pirates are a good thing! They're both in the wrong.
Cheap tea is not a right. The colonist's rights are not being stepped on. Maybe you buy more tea because you tried Jefferson's stuff first... so what? It's still not a right. King George is bone-headed, but He's not wrong on this issue.
It also alarms me that people get this issue confused with freedom of religion, housing militia, etc... these have nothing to do with what the pirates are doing. Religion and housing are about control, using your own property as you wish. Running clippers to get past the British is about making money for Jefferson and his friends, not freedom.
Regardless of Napster's motivations for creating Napster, the service itself is not illegal. There are legitimate purposes for Napster, therefore Napster should win.
RIAA is pulling a moral stand here, trying to assasinate Napster's character. If Napster is a greedy, corporate entity like RIAA says it is, I'm still going to root for them over the greedy, corporate entity of RIAA!
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
I therefore propose the following changes to our current system of copyrighting intellectual property:
1. Only the creator of the work can own the rights to the work. In other words, the creator cannot sell his rights to another person or company.
2. Upon the death of the creator of the work, the work will enter the public domain. If the creator has a legal spouse, the work will enter the public domain upon that person's death.
I believe that this proposal will have enormous benefits in terms of protecting the artist/creator of IP, because he or she can never lose the rights to their work. Sure, the artist can enter into a contract with a company to produce hard copies of the work, but the actual ownership of the work remains with the artist.
This system will also provide 'incentive to create'. Instead of the system we have now, where people who never created anything in their life live off the 'rights' to IP, we'll have a system that forces people to constantly produce new works. An older artist certainly has the right to live off the work he or she did in the past, by releasing 'greatest hits' compilations and such. But the artist's children have no rights over the IP. They will be forced to create their own works. Similarly, a company or corporation can never own the rights to IP. Only a human being can own IP.
Like I said, just a modest proposal...
Incorrect. But don't feel bad; Lars made the same error in reasoning in a new interview in the San Francisco Examiner.
Digital artifacts are not being transferred away from one party toward another. They are being duplicated, such that both parties now have the artifact.
I wish people would think about these facts more clearly and face the realities of digital media. Otherwise, we're not going to make any meaningful progress on the issue.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
It would be trivial for Napster to prevent transferring illegally stolen music: simply prevent transferring any file with a valid MP3 header.
It would be even more trivial to break this.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
Also, you can select text from xpdf (though I don't know about the others, but I don't remember having much luck with acroread (solaris version, slightly fermented)).
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Best I can come up with is advertising. An Ad spot on Napster might be worh a few bucks. Just make the client display the advert while you download. In a float-to-top can't-be-minimized window. Having never actually used Napster (Or any of its open source derivatives) I'm totally guessing on how the process works, of course.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I had a talk with my musician friend, Phil R., yesterday about this whole Napster debacle. He thinks the Internet is great and is going to revolutionize music distribution. However, when he found someone posted the LP he and his high school buds were working on to the Internet he felt violated. "They" didn't ask, however if "they" did it would probably have been okay. But what I got from my chat was that a musician has certain rights. Those rights need to be protected if the musician is to live.
Sure the RIAA is evil, Phil will loudly attest to that. However, it is looking out for the interests of its musicians no matter how little money the musicians actually realize.
...it's about distribution without the RIAA's blessing. This is not about piracy. It's about control. By putting this case forward, they are opening a door by which they can sieze control of an established distribution method.
From the brief:
The AHRA balances the interests of manufacturers, consumers, and copyright owners by plac[ing] restrictions only upon a specific type of recording device, specifically defined in the statute, requiring such devices to be equipped with copy protections and that royalty payments be made based on their sale, and exempting consumers from copyright infringement lawsuits for private uses of AHRA-covered devices: In RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc., 180 F.3d 1072, 1074-1075 (9th Cir. 1999), this Court squarely held that [u]nder the plain meaning of the [AHRA's] definition of digital audio recording devices, computers (and their hard drives) are not digital audio recording devices... Diamond also held that MP3 files contained on computer hard drives are not digital musical recordings. 180 F.3d at 1076-77. Thus, under Diamond, a computer is not a covered device, and a copy made by one Napster user of an MP3 file residing on another Napster user's computer hard drive is not a copy of a digital musical recording, and is not covered by Section 1008. 17 U.S.C. 1001(4)(A).
Here is the RIAA's bait and switch.
The bait:
The question being addressed in the Diamond Multimedia case was whether or not computers and MP3 files are "digital audio recording devices" and "digital musical recordings" for the purpose of determining whether those devices were required to implement SCMS.
The switch:
The RIAA is claiming that only activities using devices and media covered by the SCMS and royalty requirements are protected by 1008. Unfortunately for them, they have made this up out of thin air.
The appeals court directly addressed this argument in lifting the injunction. From the text of the stay:
The court reached its conclusion that Napster users were engaged in direct infringement in part because
o it ruled that 17 USC 1008's protections only applied to copying by specifically identified devices rather than, as this Court said in RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia Syst., Inc., 180 F.3d 1072 (9 th Cir. 1999), to all noncommercial copying by consumers.1
1 The court relied on the fact that this Court in Diamond Multimedia had held (in the context of the AHRA's serial copying and royalty provisions) that digital audio recording device did not include computer hard-drives. 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; that the same Diamond Multimedia Court expressly said that 17 U.S.C. 1008 "protects all noncommercial copying by consumers of digital and analog musical recordings" (180 F.3d at 1079); and that throughout the Diamond Multimedia opinion the Court discusses copying of music using computer hard-drives as AHRA protected activity.
The RIAA can of course continue to pursue their failed legal theory in this highly symphathetic lower court, but if the lower court finds in favor of the RIAA for this reason, the appeals court has all but said it will overturn a finding based on such a theory.
The other key point in Napster's defense is the argument that the activities of Napsters' users are non-commercial. The RIAA claims that Napsters are engaging in commercial activity:The RIAA can argue this point all they want to, but I don't think that they can make the case. This law simply forbids "quota" or "ratio" requirements, nothing more. This is not how Napster works. When someone makes files available on Napster, there is no expectation that they will be rewarded for their contribution by being given subsequent access to other files. When someone downloads files from Napster, there is no expectation or requirement that they make files available in return. Napster is probably the only possible file sharing system that is absolutely, authentically non-commercial with respect to its users' activities.
The RIAA reply goes on to try and prove that users of Napster are not engaging in fair use. This is irrelevant because Section 1008 does not say:It says, instead, If the activities of Napsters' users are protected by Section 1008, then the rest of the RIAA case disintegrates. If Napsters' users are not committing infringement, then fair use is not even an issue, and Napster cannot be liable for contributory infringement if there is no actual infringement.
In short, I don't think that the RIAA has made their case. Their counterargument is based on the exact legal theories that the Appeals court firmly rejected in overturning the injunction.
(And if you are a detector-user, please don't "educate" me about the use of a detector "in case the police radar is miscalibrated" [as my brother-in-law argued]. If you're traveling at legal speed, you won't slow down if your detector goes off ... since you've no reason to. Only if you know you're over the limit would you react to an incoming signal.)
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
No it's not. In the case of Apache, far more people use it as a legitimate web server than as a mechanism to distribute MP3s. The primary purpose apache is used for is NOT MP3 distribution. In the Napster case, the exact opposite is true. Napster is used almost exclusively to transfer copyrighted material. The primary purpose something is used for is very important when determining its legality. The only real defense Napster has is the Audio Home Recording Act, but even there they are standing on shaky ground.
That being said, I still think it's pointless to go after Napster. Winning won't change the status quo.
-Vercingetorix
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
*** FLAME ON ***
Since you used bold: I am really tired of reading idiots who don't know shit about copyright.
'Unauthorized copying' is not stealing. It is simply 'unauthorized.' Being unauthorized does not, in itself, constitute a violation. Period.
If you bothered to read the Napster case, you'd find that showing damages is necessary to show a copyright violation. In fact, copyright law before DCMA established four "mutual non-exclusive" criteria for determining copyright violation:
(1) The nature of the use (commercial vs. academic, news, personal).
(2) The monetary damage to the copyright holder, if any.
(3) The extent of the work used (a phrase or sentence, or an exact copy of a painting).
(4) The intent of the person(s) making the copy.
(For those who care to do their research, the key documents here are the White and Blue Papers produced by Congress on the issues).
Unless the DCMA and other recent attempts to redefine copyright stand, copyright does not mean that you 'own' a work and can do with it as you wish. All you 'own' is the copyright itself, and all this means is that you have certain very limited rights to authorize copying of particular works. Very limited, as the point of this system was to establish a balance between the public's need and right to information, and the need to fairly compensate authors, spurring them to create new Works.
Once again: COPYRIGHT VIOLATION IS NOT A CRIME. The DCMA & etc. have yet to hold up in Court, and the Supremes have repeatedly indicated their intent to resist any attempt to limit fair use. Before DCMA etc., copyright was almost entirely a civil matter. Let's say it again: COPYRIGHT VIOLATION IS NOT A CRIME. THERE'S NOTHING TO STEAL. OWNING A COPYRIGHT IS NOT THE SAME AS OWNING A WORK. A WORK CANNOT BE STOLEN -- ONLY THE PAPER IT'S PRINTED ON. CODING IS NOT A CRIME, EITHER.
And again, if you bother to read through what people have posted here, through Barlow's writings at EFF, or things written by copyright experts like Pamula Samuelson, you'll find that copyright is a lot more complex than your "we can't let the masses storm the Bastille" rant assumes.
Got It? ?*** FLAME OFF ***
You are assuming that every download is a purchase avoided. I doubt very much that college kids with hundreds of MP3s could actually have purchased all those CDs.
There are also people (myself included) who have bought CDs they never would have known about because an MP3 provided a practical means of trying out new music. The only alternative would have been to order the CD and try to send it back after opening and playing it.
I bet it's a wash. I bet the only money the RIAA is losing is from legal expenses, and of course the opportunity lost from not cooperating with the new distribution methods.
--
Infuriate left and right
If the Mercedes could be produced for free, and your theft didn't prevent anyone else from buying one, I would have very little problem with your theft. But there is a very real physical cost. Just as there is a physical cost to an actual CD -- I would never condone stealing a CD from a store.
But bits? No cost there, other a few seconds of server time.
I see no theft in copying bits which you would never buy anyway. If you copy AutoCAd and play with it, but could never afford to buy your own copy, AutoCAD hasn't lost a cent. Where is the loss?
It used to be common for office workers to install Microsoft Office at home so they could work at home nights and weekends. No doubt they also wrote letters and recipies and resumes. Is there theft in any of this?
Here are counter examples. Suppose you are handing out coupons on a street corner. Suppose someone grabs one before you have a chance to give it out? Suppose someone takes two? Is either of those theft?
Suppose a store sale says "2 per customer" -- is it theft to go back several times and buy two each time?
How about contests "No purchase necessary" -- what if you enter a dozen times?
How about radio contests -- "12th caller wins!" -- is it theft to use a fast redial button? Is it theft to have your computer redial even faster?
--
Infuriate left and right
Although I cannot stand the RIAA, the more I think about it something just seems wrong about Napster making a profit off of someone elses work.
If Napster was not doing this is for profit, then it would be an easier case for me. But with Napster doing this as a business, it seems fair that the record companies should get a cut; even if they don't really deserve any more money.
The MPAA case is a lot easier; they (the MPAA) are clearly in the wrong. But the RIAA have some valid points, and they are sounding more valid all the time.
Gnutella, on the other hand, is not a business and is therefore exempt, IMHO.
I'm not really taking a side here, but if I understand correctly this is the central issue: Does making it possible to commit an illegal act make one a party to the illegal act?
The NRA's position on this debate is clear: "Guns don't kill. People do."
The legal ramifications of a win by RIAA could have impact beyond the music industry. The fact that Napster exists does not cause people to commit copyright violations any more than the legal and easy availability of firearms causes people to commit gun-related crimes.
Given that Napster or some similar service is certainly never going to go away (whether commercial or otherwise), I am driven to ask this question:
What ever happened to the days when artists made their money by actually performing their music? Undoubtedly, the music industry has changed irrevocably since then. I would imagine CD's are the bread and butter of many musicians, since they are so much cheaper to produce than concerts.
The fact is, the music industry has to change again to survive. They need to provide added value that you can't get from a free download (which people will get whether it's from Napster, gnutella, FreeNet or some other source). In the days where I would copy songs off the radio onto a cassette, the added value was the whole album. I suspect that's still the great appeal of CD's. What should the new value add be? Music videos?
Actually, I disagree, there are some major flaws in their reasoning. Particularly when they essentially argue that fair use cannot apply to music. Read it carefully. Remember that copyright a special privilege instituted to encourage the development of the arts and sciences. Fair Use is the body of exceptions to copyright law necessary to prevent it from violating basic human rights. The RIAA would like to eliminate these exceptions. I believe their concern is not harm to artists but harm to their own business model, which is arguably worse for the artists than Napsters. Regardless of whether or not you agree, the fact remains that this harm is in depriving them of a privilege, not a basic right. If this harm cannot be avoided without weakening the protection of basic rights, that is too high a price to pay.
I agree the analogy is a good one, but the claim that the user is at fault is correct. Do the tobacco companies hire goon squads to force people to smoke at gunpoint? Of course not. Hell, I should know, I was a smoker for over 16 years. I have no sympathy whatsoever with smokers that claim that tobacco companies are responsible for their smoking. The tobacco companies sell the stuff, whether you use it or not is your choice. And Napster doesn't force anyone to use their service at all, let alone use it for illegal purposes.
On the other side, both the tobacco companies and Napster are clearly not without blame either. The tobacco companies almost certainly have knowingly lied about the safety of their product, and should bear liability for that. That is a much more limited liability than the ridiculous rash of recent suits against them have claimed, however. And Napster, obviously, is guilty of encouraging their users to break the law. That, also is a much different matter in terms of responsibility from what their attacker wants to pin on them. Whatever moral condemnation Napster deserves for encouraging copyright infringement, there is something called Free Speech to be considered here. It is illegal for instance to grow certain plants in this country, but it is still legal to write and distribute books/web pages/etc encouraging and enabling people that want to grow those plants. However wrong I think Napsters actions are, better to have that wrong than to lose Free Speech.
Again, I must disagree. The GNU license relies on copyright, yes, but it is a defensive application of copyright. Without copyright law, it would have no force, but it would also be unneeded. Visit gnu.org and read up on the philosoph behind the GPL.
What the RIAA is arguing in this case is NOT simply "the heart of copyright law for many many years" - their arguments, if accepted, essentially eliminate the fair use exceptions to copyright law that have been established for years as necessary to prevent copyright law from violating basic pre-existing rights, as well as the complete destruction of the important distinction between guilt by act and guilt by association.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I wonder how painful it felt to use their own prior legal defeat in THAT case to bolster THIS one. It's interesting that they bring it up...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Out of curiosity, just who, exactly, would they sue in the case of Gnutella? Or Freenet for that matter? And assuming they could find someone to sue, what impact would such a suit have on Gnutella or Freenet, even if the RIAA won such a suit?
-Vercingetorix
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
It's been said before, but the RIAA is just shooting itself in the foot. They need to be working with Napster or creating their own on-line music distribution/sharing system.
People would be willing to pay for Napster or a similiar service. People see the value in what they are getting. The RIAA should be taking advantage of this. But they are determined to squash online music distribution because of piracy fears. Ironically, this means that the only place people can trade music online is at a site that enables copyright infringement.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
What. Gnutella, like the internet, is based on porn. The internet in my view and the Simpsons, is nothing but a way to facilitate 2.5 billion men's urges to get porn. And get porn they shall, weither it pay site or gnutella! PORN! PORN! PORN!. In fact, on Gnutella I'm quite disgusted by the amount of MP3's and other crap I get when I do searches for my porn. I think someone should make a plugin just for finding porn on Gnutella. And BTW, you switch a few letters, and Gnutella easily becomes Gnitalia.
Written with much love,
Bongo
The Badnews Bear
On a side note, I was impressed with the Cagary Library's approach to filtering: it's optional (parents select it when registering their children for a card). Much better than enforcing it for everybody (not that I like censorship in the first place).
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
While the RIAA may not be the best model, it certainly stands for one thing - copyright protection. Even that Linux kernel which you find dear is protected under the same copyright. "My enemy's enemy..." and all that: the RIAA stands in defense of basic copyright. Not even software licensing or anything legally questionable, but simply the copy protection part of copyright that's been at the heart of copyright law for many many years.
While I don't like the RIAA's business decisions, it's the same as if Microsoft were forced to defend their copyright. Of course we would want them to win; our beloved GPL defense rests upon the same things that Microsoft's EULA rests upon. While we may not like Microsoft as a business, I'd find it hard to condemn Microsoft for defending its copyright. Same with the RIAA>
Free BeOS, runs from a Linux partition
I'll try it again.
What is Napster stealing? Napster has possesion of no copyrighted materials anywhere on their servers. They have nothing, and so far, have not gotten any more from a single customer.
Technical problems of blocking pirated music is not Napsters problem. No industry is ever responsible for their product being used illegaly. If I drink Draino, that is my problem, not Draino's. There is nothing inherently illegal with Napster.
Napster is not in the music business, it is in the peer to peer file sharing business, so you first point is not applicable.
- I like pudding.
I hate to say it, but Napster has not played its cards well. It picked fights with people who are more equipped than it. Now, it's in court and in trouble, doing damage to personal autonomy and freedom of speech.
It should have played the "Microsoft Java" card - and done what Microsoft did with Java. Make partnerships. Pretend to play along. Pretend to be friendly - all the while dragging its feet, and ever-so-slightly pushing the bounds of that friendship.
Sure, Microsoft ended up in court over Java, too. But it was a diffent battle - it was a battle over standards, not a battle over freedom. Had napster "played friendly" with the record labels, instead of confronting them, they would be in less heat now, and still doing what they've been doing.
pt
Will the real Richard Stallman please stand up?
Look, I dislike big corporations as much as the next guy... but the fact is that Napster is used mostly (not exclusively) to pirate music, and that's bad. Yes, the RIAA needs to see the writing on the wall that digital distribution is the way to go and they can't gouge consumers... But that doesn't mean Napster is a good thing! They're both in the wrong.
Pirating music is not a right. You're rights are not being stepped on. Maybe you bought more music because you heard it on Napster first... so what? It's still not a right. RIAA is bone-headed, but they are not wrong on this issue.
It also alarms me that people get this issue confused with the DeCSS issue... DeCSS is demonstrably not used for pirating (and isn't necessary). DeCSS is about control, and using your own property as you wish. Napster is about making money for themselves and their stock holders, not freedom.
The enemies of Democracy are
Could someone please explain to me Napster Inc.'s idea on how it makes money? All I remember was a memo from their offices a while back making one of their goals 'destruction of current CD distributors, e.g., Tower'. Is this company just so chock-full of idiocy that they jumped into a product with no viable method of making money? Or are they such megalomaniacs that they thought they would be the forefront of a music 'revolution' in which artists would require their services to be heard?
P.S. If you're on napster right now, go get the song 'Megalomaniac'. Pretty damn good.
You are more than the sum of what you consume.
You are more than the sum of what you consume.
Desire is not an occupation.
XPDF also works, albeit it's not the most beautiful program visually ever written.
There are schloads of RPMs and debs out there for those who need it. It's in woody.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
From what I can remember about lawsuits involving CD-R, casette tapes, and VCRs, the law is that if their is any legal use for a product, it shouldn't be taken from the public. That is why CD-Rs, VCRs, casette tapes, bongs and guns are still availible for sale. For the same reason, Napster's service is legal. Morality should not be part of a country's policy, and is a whole other, more deeply involved field.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
Ethics naturally arise as a consequence of society's self-interest, the desire of a civilization to keep itself coherent in the face of the wildly conflicting desires of its members. Ethics arise as a way to lay the groundwork, however implicitly, for people to interact with each other in the gray areas. But they don't come about in a vacuum. Ethics are defined by a consensus of the self-interests of the people who follow them.
The upshot is, whether or not you believe piracy is wrong, if nearly everyone does it (and your 20 million people, though less than 10% of the US population, would probably comprise a majority of those people interested in online music) then it's ethical. People are saying, in effect "We don't care if artists are getting what they consider a fair share, and we sure as hell don't care if the record industry does. We want this music online, and you'll give it to us."
In the face of that kind of pressure, the only option is to change the way we do things. There's no value to arguing over it in the courts - the markets will out.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Wait just one second here. Hasn't Napster already been through enough. I mean, sure it is getting more media coverage than before, but people are still going to be flocking away from it just because they think it might be against the law.
To put Napster out of business, even if not permanently, would do a serious disservice to the online community's reputation. While the RIAA claims that their clients are being harmed right now, and therefore Napster should be shut down, it is also true that Napster has a right to be providing it services, pending a court verdict. Either way the court decides, action must take place after the verdict, and after the judge has had time to make up his mind.
--
Bad spellers of the world, untie!
Well, they have a good point when they say that if the court ruled they are likely to win (and apparently the court did?, otherwise there wouldn't be an injuction), then the injunction should go into effect. I guess I missed whatever Napster's justification for the stay was, but I'll bet anything that it was really lame.
There are some assumptions in here, though. This document most certainly does have spin. (I'll explain later.) The funny part, though, is here:
Wow! I can't believe they admitted that! Assuming that "sampling" isn't just a euphemism for "pirate the whole album", then it sounds to me like they are admitting that if people heard the music ahead of time, they wouldn't want to buy it! Holy shit! Am I misinterpreting this? It sounds like they fear try-before-you-buy.Oh, as for the spin. Right after that, they say that if someone can get one free song, then..
They also mention earlier in the document: Their point is that Napster isn't just competing with CDs, but also with the record company's "legitimate online" sales.Oh the bias, the bias! Don't you see what is wrong with this? I'll tell you: the record companies are not offering MP3s-for-pay. They are trying to sell music in goofy proprietary formats (the SDMI precursors, like Microsoft's Mediaplayer format) with bizarre conditions that inhibit Fair Use. When they say they are trying to get consumers to accept for-pay digital music, they are being very misleading here. Intelligent consumers will never accept what they have been trying up to now, because the record companies have been acting in bad faith! I do not want to buy music in a closed format! I guess we're going to have to finish crushing the MPAA in the DVD case before the RIAA realizes this error.
If the record companies offered download-for-pay music in a real standard format (e.g. MP3) then this argument would pull a lot more weight. As it is, though, it is bullshit.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
RIAA quoted on page 28, how Napster can block unauthorized music. The flaw in this is that every music that has to be traded on napster has to be approved. if i wanted to share the mp3 of the trax i just rawked up 5 minutes ago, I have to go through process of having napster approve it. the other flaw in this is that the protection uses artist name and music title. what stops me from distributing metallica's song under a new free artists name? nothing! hence, napster is right in maintaing that they don't have the technology to block all unauthorized mp3s. i am very disgusted at the paper.
Time does not wait.
From the brief: "Thus, as one Napster user posted on the Napster website: "We all know it's illegal. We just don't think it's wrong." Frackman Decl., Ex. K, at p. 8. This view subverts the very purpose of copyright law, to the long term detriment of the public." What total BS! What this shows is thar the RIAA is subverting "the very purpose fo copyright law, to the long term detriment of the public." (Madison, US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8)They've be doing this for years by pressuring Congress to extend the length of copyright to 95 years for works for hire, and life + 75 years for other works. The whole purpose of copyright is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Art... for limited Times". That is some misinterpretation of the Constitution. 95 years is not a limited time, it is longer than the normal human lifespan. How in hell will this promote the progress of music if the person/corporation can milk that one work for 95 years, they'll be dead before they have any 'motivation' to do anymore works. If this isn't a perversion of copyright then I don't know what is. No wonder that Napster user feels that they are doing no wrong. Secondly, Napster doesn't facilitate stealling of the Intellectual Property. What politicians and MS do is stealling IP, they take other peoples ideas and claim them as their own. Copying an MP3 isn't stealing, it's copying. One is not claiming to have created the darn thing. IP can only really be copied, thus any scarcity is artifical. Ideas are free and pleantiful, music has always been that way. Well until now that is (if the RIAA gets its way), it's the media and the cost of the performance that is (well should be)charged for. The music (the idea) is free, I actually don't need anytype of device but myself to hear a song. You see I can hear the song in my head, or sing it myself. Now that the media cost is gone, the performance cost is all that's left. That can be handled by well paying to see the artist perform. MP3s are merely ideas, totaly medialess, just like the ones in everyones (well maybe not)head.
Normally in battles involving the RIAA or MPAA, standing up for the little guy who is protecting his first-amendment rights against the evil corporation is not only the attractive option, but the correct one. After all, the MPAA and RIAA are both strongly corrupt organizations, and both were primary motivators behind the worst bill passed since the CDA: the DMCA.
/. (and probably most people in the world) won't ever create something of their own, chances are they will work for a company that does. Now, with everyone in the world downloading your company's software, music, movie, etc. for free over their cable modems, how is that company going to make money? The typical /. comment is that it doesn't affect the offender. However, when your employer suddenly tells you that you are going to be laid off because they can't afford to pay you due to piracy over Napster2002, you'd probably see things a little differently. Suddenly, you can't put food on the table because some pimple-faced 13 year-old is too busy saying that Napster2002 is a form of expression, and deserves to be protected, while he rationalizes away his daily 2GB of downloads.
However, in this case, things are considerably different. Not only is standing up for the RIAA the correct thing, it's absolutely necessary.
Our legal system operates quite heavily on the concept of precedents: basically, when Congress doesn't dictate exactly what constitutes an infringement and what doesn't, the Courts are responsible for applying the (admittedly vague) laws on a case-by-case basis. When a Judge reaches a decision, that decision will be used as the basis in future decisions of similar nature.
Now, let's take a look at what happens if Napster wins: a service which is almost entirely used for illegal purposes is given the green light to continue business as it sees fit, without bothering to request permission before facilitating the mass-distribution of copyrighted works. If Napster wins, every court decision involving piracy from now on will probably reference the Napster decision. It wouldn't be too long before a service similar to Napster is created which facilitates the transactions of video games and other software (akin to a centralized Hotline), and based on the Napster decision, such software is protected. Soon, you would be able to download any image, movie, software, or song for free. Sounds almost utopian, right?
Wrong. Despite the fact that most members of
Anyone who is really backing Napster at this point needs to give up their myopic view of the world. Yes, the RIAA is an evil corporation. But this time, they aren't attacking free speech. They are defending copyrights. You may think it's all fine and dandy to steal other's work; however, if Napster wins it would be the biggest case of chopping off a nose to spite a face in the history of the world - eventually it will come back and bite you in the ass... hard.
Given a legal system based on precedent, allowing Napster to win is a very, very dangerous one indeed.
I usually use this free service hosted by BCL Computers to turn PDF file into HTML files. The result is simply amazing.
Napster is good for finding obscure, out-of-print, and otherwise rare music, as well as live stuff by taper-friendly bands like the Tragically Hip or the Grateful Dead. Also, some artists do release their music to the Public Domain. And From a d/l perspective, there's nothing wrong with obtaining an mp3 of something you have on cd already. And not every mp3 is music (e.g. New York Times commentary), nor is every mp3 copyrighted.
Who cares if Napster wins or loses? What's going to happen as napster-like software becomes more common with the advent of high-bandwidth connections?
In the distant future, (heh) when everybody in a technologically-advanced location is able to transfer gigabytes of data across the country in a moment and for a minimal cost, what will the Recording industries do then?
I predict that there will soon come a true "Information Age," where information will be so easy and inexpensive to propagate, that there will be absolutely no way to stop its dissemmination.
With the wide availability of fast internet connections, the feasability of wide-area shared data repositories are becoming (and will become) quite commonplace... right? So what happens when Big Evil Corporation can no longer police or control the dissemination of its electronic information?
All computer-based information, be it somebody's "art" (i.e. music) or somebody's hard work and talent (i.e. software) is nothing more than a string of 1's and 0's, that can be duplicated and redistributed at a low (and, in my hypothetical rant, at an eventual zero) cost. Encrypted or not, built with a pop-up liscence, whatever... it still boils down to easily-replicable 1s and 0s.
So, in the future, maybe businesses and people who deal in electronic information be forced to assume that once their particular information, product, or artwork has been put into an electronic form, that product is available to anybody at nearly zero cost.
Then the question becomes, how would they make money? My opinion is that the music artist would make money with live performances, or with music released to television or radio distributions before they release it in a recorded media format. In the case of software, people would be paid based on the speed at which they could produce somehting, or people would be paid to fill a software void that hadn't been filled yet. We already see an example of the possible business model with open-source software.
Overall, I think we're moving into an age where information becomes plentiful and not "worth" anything; rather: time, service, and conveinience become the main things that draw the consumer dollar. Like water. For the most part, water is free. You can walk down to the pool and get some. But people still buy packaged water, and people pay a fee to have it pumped from a central location into their homes. People who live in an area where water is scarce might pay a high price for the same water that is freely available to somebody who lives by a lake and owns a well. It would be a complete upheaval compared to the way we do things now, but that's one possible way I see it happening.
And I suspect that when that day comes, there'll have to be a great change for the RIAA, et. al.
Just musing. I'd be very interested in the opinions of the more well-informed and econmically-savvy than I. Apologies for my spelling.
-Mikey
"by sharing your files on, and downloading files from Napster you are breaking the LAW. "
Not true if I am downloading music from cds which I have purchased in the past... And this would be AMERICAN law wouldn't it? If I download in Zaire, why should I care about your American law? Scoff all you like, there are societies where possessions and profit are almost meaningless concepts. "Go live there?" you might say...I think I would rather build such a place HERE AND NOW.
"The law that has existed to protect artists for many years now but that with the digital revolution, appears to have been thrown out the window."
If the law protects artists so well, why do so few artists profit in the face of the rising profits of the RIAA? The point of copyright is to allow an innovator/artist to profit for a reasonable amount of time from their works. Now we have efforts in place to extend copyright to mean that some entity will profit *forever* from a work. This is CONTRARY to the original intent of copyright. If the artists own the copyrights [which IS the intent of a copyright] then why haven't they profited from them in the past? Because the record labels do the profiting. They garner the control of copyrights and profit from the sale of music to the exclusion of the artist. The artists, if profitable, are generally profitable from concerts and merchandise sale *not the the music which they have copyrighted*. This is a gross generalization, but so many people want to define my rights in an environment which exists outside of national and therefore legislative boundaries and so many are getting self-righteous about copyright. Why should I bow to your LAW? Your LAW locks up hackers for years *without trial* while *denying them bail*...an act that is ILLEGAL, yet our court system enacted such activity. We have police officers who are *permitted* to execute black citizens and are found to have *committed no crime*. If killing an unarmed black man who's fumbling for his wallet is not a criminal activity, why are you getting so HUFFY about MP3 downloading?
Talking about the LAW is always a funny thing because it works so differently depending upon social and economic factors. MAYBE IT IS TIME TO REDEFINE THE LAW...MAYBE THAT IS WHAT WE ARE NOW DOING ONLINE.
IT'S CALLED CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE AND WE HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO PRACTICE IT, JUST AS THE RIAA HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO HIRE LAWYERS TO TRY TO STOP US.
THE LAW IS NOT WHAT IS WRITTEN IN BOOKS IT IS WHAT SOCIETY DEFINES IT TO BE.
What country should determine the laws of the internet? It should be the US? The US Recording Industry? The MPAA? How are any of these organizations, even the United States, qualified to dictate online usage for the entire world.
The real problem is that the online community needs to begin to define its *own* laws.
I find copyright law one of the most reasonable laws outthere; not in the least because the basis is the same almost anywhere.
How about reducing copyright to the origional term of 14-28 years?
So.... in 2005, 14 years after Linus laid the foundation for Linux, Microsoft can take the code and incorperate it in their software? And already do that with many of the GNU tools out there? Is that what you are suggesting?
Why *can't* we create a montage of planet of the apes and the origional startrek?
For the same reason Microsoft can't take GNU code and add it to their code base.
Our culture is held hostage to 75 year copyrights.
That's 75 years after the death of the author. It will be interesting to see what happens at the end of the next century with GNU code which had many authors.
-- Abigail
I don't understand. You mean to tell me that this isn't a black and white issue? Am I to believe that this isn't a case between a huge, evil, immoral corporate giant and a small, cute, helpless, company that has never even crossed against the light? I hardly think that a complex issue like rethinking intellectual property laws should require us to consider that there are no good guys or bad guys, only people serving their own interests.
Slashdot is no place for unbiased reporting.
</SARCASM>
--
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
As such, assuming the music was not registered for renewal, anything before 1985 would be public domain, and anything before 1995 would be within 10 years of being in the public domain..
If we assume that the companies registered everything for an extra 14 years. (Not a given, after all, 90% of music loses money, and why throw more money after bad), then anything before 1972 would be in the public domain. And anything before 1982 would be within 10 years of being in the public domain...
Mmmmm. Starwars in the public domain, joining Santa Clause... Makes my mouth water.
The cold, hard truth is that they are right. The document is well-written and undisputable. It doesn't matter that the RIAA is evil. The fact is, they are in the right. We should keep that in mind and pick our battles more carefully.
We do and say a lot of things behind our protective monitors that we would never do otherwise. Downloading copyrighted music via Napster isn't any different than stealing it from the music store.
We must respect evil, and we must make evil respect us.
Yes, Napster should win the trial and we should be happy about this, but we should want them to loose the injunction. Why? Napster is a greedy corporate entity, so we want their users to switch to non-corperate file sharing systems. This would happen if Napster was shutdown for 6-12 months, but finally won their case. Actually, we only want them to win their case to make it more difficult for the RIAA to attack Gnutella and Freenet.
Seriously, the consumer (and artists) will only win if the RIAA and Napster kill each other. The logical way for this to happen would be for the RIAA to get an injunction which lasts long enough to make Napster a minor player in the online music world, but for Napster to ultimatly win the court case.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
1 - Napster doesn't really do anything new. You can request a song at most radio stations and tape it, or get a copy from a friend. Napster is just over the Internet.
2 - People wouldn't bother using Napster if CDs were more reasonably priced. Local and indie band CDs that I buy are usually ~$5. RIAA type CDs are 15-20, usually 17 around my area. They could easily sell these CDs for 10 even after promo, videos, production and failed artists even if they paid artists a reasonable amount (most get about the same as a teacher) and still make a big profit. At 15-20, there is often 300% return per CD even factoring the rest of the costs, including failed artists
You make an excellent point that I had never even considered. The RIAA's interpretation -- that Section 1008 only protects copying done with Section 1001 equipment and media -- is obviously an incorrect interpretation, because Section 1008 covers both digital and analog equipment and media, while the rest of the act makes it clear that only digital equipment and media are covered by SCMS and subject to royalties. If it was Congress' intent that only activity using AHRA-restricted devices and media were protected by Section 1008, then why does Section 1008 protect activities using analog equipment and media, when there are no "covered" analog recorders or media?
You ask a good question though. Why is it good public policy to allow all non-commercial copying, instead of just non-commercial copying onto "covered" devices?
In general, it is bad public policy to collect taxes or royalties on a product or activity, and at the same time declare that activity to be illegal. It would be one thing if the Congressional purpose of this law were to impede non-commercial copying, as, for instance, a punitive tax levied on illegal drugs is designed to discourage the drug trade by allowing the IRS to go after convicted drug traffickers for "tax evasion", but that was clearly not what Congress was trying to do. Congress was not trying to discourage or impede consumer use of digital audio hardware and media. On the contrary, the AHRA was promoted both by Congress and the RIAA as "enabling legislation" that would break the legal gridlock, and bring digital technology to the masses.
I believe that Congress created a flat exemption for all non-commercial copying in order to avoid the problem of "tainted" copies.
For instance, if the RIAA interpretation were correct, here would be some of the consequences:
1) You buy an audio DAT, pay the royalty, and copy a phonograph record into the DAT. This would be legal.
2) You take the DAT you just made in step 1, and upload it onto a computer. You then use a digital audio processing tool to remove the surface rumble and needle clicks and pops. You record the cleaned-up results on a second audio DAT, on which you have also paid royalties.
Now, is (2) a legal or an illegal activity? When you uploaded the copyrighted work to your computer, you transferred it from a "covered" device to a non-covered device. Under the RIAA's interpretation, the copy on your computer would now be an illegal copy.
How about the resulting, cleaned-up DAT. Is that legal or illegal? Under the RIAA's interpretation, it was made from an "illegal" copy, so that would presumably make it illegal.
Back to the issue at hand -- Napster.
3) You borrow a CD from your sister, and use an AHRA-covered, SCMS compliant CD player and AHRA-covered, SCMS compliant standalong CD recorder to make a CDR copy of that CD, on an audio CDR on which you have paid the royalty.
If anything, (4) is CLEARLY covered and protected by Section 1008. Even the RIAA seems to agree on that.
4) You purchase a blank Audio CDR, paying the industry royalty. You now go onto Napster, and download 74 minutes of music, which you use to fill that CDR.
Is this legal? You have done, in essence, exactly what Congress authorized. You have purchased a piece of digital audio media, paid a royalty on that media, and filled it with copyrighted music.
Under the RIAA's interpretation, the reason why (3) is covered, but (4) is not, is that in (4), the use of Napster -- a non-AHRA covered technology, is considered illegal by the RIAA, and, therefore, the CDR you made is illegal, even though you paid a royalty on it!
If this doctrine were to be accepted into law, then it would be impossible to determine whether any given digital audio recording was legally or illegally acquired. This would be bad public policy. Hence, the blanket exemption on all non-commercial copying. The public benefit is that there is no such thing as a "tainted" copy.
As for your comment about "your days as a software development are numbered", I remind you that the royalty provisions and resulting public exemption on copyright infringement only applies to audio recordings. Title 17 Chapter 10 ONLY applies to musical copyrighted works, not to computer programs, and not to audiovisual works, like DVDs.
As for the third argument, I see no cause-and-effect relationship between the two. After all, the MPAA designed and implemented CSS at a time when copying of DVDs was impossible.
I gotta ask this...did ANYONE ELSE notice that if you click on the "What costs goes into making a CD" that it takes you to 3 different links and ends in a final webpage of 10 PARAGRAPHS...that STILL DOESNT ANSWER THE QUESTION????? I read it all the way through...yes...the Cost of making CD's have gone down...yes...the cost of advertising has gone up...yes...there's lots of factors involved in producing a CD...but NOWHERE is there an estimate or rough guess on how much it costs to make a CD. Anyone out there know the REAL ANSWER?
Then I'm all for it.. Visionaries like Stallman have been questioning copyright for the last 20 years. Highly internet literate people have also been questioning the use of copyright.
But we are a minority, too small to even have the potential to be dangersous.
But napster is letting tens of millions of people get, create, distribute, and trade artistic works. Take that away, and they'll question why, and those tens of millions might be able to rearrange the whole edifice of intellectual property.
Copyright, in england, was origionally used by the crown for censorship.. The 'copyright' office would own title to all books, and distribute a 'copyright' to a bookprinter, so they could publish it. Publishing a book without having a copy right was a serious crime..
Then copyrights were used by the printers guild to lock out competetors. They would call ones who printed a manuscript, 'pirates'.
It was almost a century later that the right to control a work got switched to the writer/artist.
Honestly, I wouldn't mind copyright laws so much if they were reasonable... I'm advocating either removing copyright entirely..... Or,
How about reducing copyright to the origional term of 14-28 years? Keep it at about the same (pre-DMCA) strength, but make it shorter.. What I dislike about the current copyright is the terms. They make me and everyone else feel helpless in front of our culture, when we want to get into things that are modern.
Why *can't* we create a montage of planet of the apes and the origional startrek? Why can't I create a montage of I Love Lucy and Star Trek, where the Enterprise fights it out with 60's american culture? See my signature.
Our culture is held hostage to 75 year copyrights. The only ones who might get a chance to explore my culture it will be my great grandkids, and they won't care. Just as I don't care about the only culture I can freely use. It's too old, too alien. It *predates* the great depression! And they keep on extending copyrights retroactively!
Personally, I think that it might be too late to just reduce copyrights a reasonable term. I'd prefer that instead, as copyright *is* a relatively known quantity. It's a really bad kludge, but the other kludge's I seem much worse.
As someone already claimed I was wrong with 14/28 years...
http://www.loc.gov/copyright/docs/circ1a.html
Circular 1a
United States Copyright Office
A Brief History and Overview
.....
May 31, 1790
First copyright law enacted under the new U.S. Constitution. Term of 14 years with privilege of renewal for term of 14 years. Books, maps, and charts protected. Copyright registration made in the U.S. District Court where the author or proprietor resided.
If the Libray of Congress isn't a definitive source, I don't know what is.