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Judge Orders MP3.com to Pay $118M Damages
jbridleman writes "Fox News is reporting that MP3 must pay $118M to Universal Music Group for copyright violation. Much less than the $450M UMG wanted." They're calling it willful copyright violation. Says that if MP3.com is forced to pay this much for every album they made available with their beam box software, it could cost them over 3 billion dollars.
first off, most of the (>=+2) comments so far seem to agree with the judge, think that the ruling is fair (perhaps the fine is high). these people and the moderators, need to spend less time sucking on the mass media pipe, and more time thinking for themselves - better yet, given the results so far, they might be better off not thinking for themselves and just spend a bit more time listening to rms, because they have become victims of the riaa/bsa/... propaganda he has cautioned about. you are thinking way inside the box.
beam it allowed:
a user to listen to his/her collection of music
that is all. the judge, and the fools that agree with the decision, have been caught up in the concept that mechanism matters. it does not. so long as the owner is the listener, any number of miles of wire, copper or aluminum or fiber, any transport format, any means of display (speaker or eg braile), is fair use.
the complaint is that beamit was a performance because it played music from cds mp3.com owned. this is bull. totb.
beamit's use of the cd serial number is nothing more than a means of compression.
the copyrighted data was read from the cd, sent to the remote site where it was stored, and then sent to the owner in another location. the format and the compression scheme changed along the way, but the end result is that the owner is listening to his own music
My blog
I'm allowed to copy CDs onto my disk drive. What's the difference?
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The judge reduced the amount drastically because mp3.com was acting with much more care and responsibility than other internet start ups. And I believe the fact that UMG was the only label not to settle out of court, the judge made a ruling comparable to those other settlements.
The ruling, while sucking big time, is relatively fair.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
mp3.com did broadcast the music, albeit to a selected audience. However, according to current copyright law, it does not matter whether the person being distributed to has a valid license. It only matters whether the person doing the distributing has a valid license.
I repeat: under current copyright law, there is no such thing as a 'right to listen.' The only right that copyright law effects is the 'right to distribute.' And without an explicit right to distribute (such as that purchased through ASCAP or a similiar group), the only distribution rights that anybody has are those that fall under the notion of 'fair use.'
I don't buy for one second that my.mp3.com falls under any sort of fair use. And apparently, the courts did not either.
It's a $250 million aware, not $118 million. I'm not sure where people got the 118 number from. It's not in the article anywhere....
When I say comparable, I am saying within the same realm as the other settlements, which were actually around $20 million. $118 million is considerably more than that, but drastically less than the $450 million UMG was originally asking for.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
I think that MP3.com was trying to be an honest business, but the IP laws in this country are so screwed up that they made an honest mistake.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
They distributed it to whom? People who had already paid for use of the copyrighted material. Does this require permission from the copyright holders?
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Yes, in a way, by putting it up for all to see, CNN (for example) is giving permission for the data to be copied anywhere.
That's not quite right though. What if I printed off the CNN.com website and started handing out the copies to people? And charging enough to make a small profit since I'm giving them a more portable copy? Would that be okay? I'm guessing "no". So how is this different from the ISP case? I don't think it is.
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They're playing this game of whack-a-mole. Wonder if they'll manage to whack all the moles...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Nonsense. Ass/u/ming that mp3.com owned the CDs, they can copy them all they want, put them on hard disks, etc. without owing a dime. Copying the data to other media wasn't infringement. Sharing/redistributing ("beaming") the data, on the other hand, was infringement.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Too late buddy. The MP3 owner has actually bought this one. Check.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Anyway, with mp3.com, copyright holders see the money for every person that listens to the music. Big diff' 'tween napster and mp3.com.
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They should send them $118M in Holiday in towels. Think they'll get it?
I don't like this ruling, but I think it's probably "right" in the eyes of the DMCA. On the other hand, I think the judge missed a perfect opportunity to apply some real Solomonesque justice here. There is clearly an enormous desire on the part of the consuming public to be able to download music via the web. The RIAA and friends have been unable or unwilling to meet this demand, and thus companies like MP3.com and Napster have appeared to fill the vacuum. I think the ideal resolution for this court case would have been to find MP3.com guilty as charged, but set aside the damages until the RIAA supplied a viable, approved method of distributing digital music via the web.
If I record a cover of Purple Haze, and it hits the top 40 on radio, the Hendrix family gets royalties and I get nothing.
Radio stations pay royalties to the composers via ASCAP and BMI. The performers and copyright holders do not get royalties.
The artists don't see enough of the profits from a CD. And that's why we've flocked to Napster and Gnutella and the like.
While I agree with the overall tone of the poster, that line is so full of baloney.
People "flocked" to Napster because they could finally used their dormroom ethernet or cablemodem for something other than Porn or MMORPGs. People "flocked" to Napster because they could listen to music and decide if they liked the music without buying the CD [some did buy, some didn't buy].
You don't find ways of spending zero, if you're worried that one of the two selling parties is already getting shafted when you spend non-zero.
[
I still think the BeamIT software was not a copyright infringement. How can it be an infringement if I can listen to only things that I own? They are just adding value to my CDs, for no cost to me. How does that infringe on a copyright? They are like my own radio station. Radio stations don't infringe on copyright. but I digress....
Note to self: do not buy MP4 domain name. Wouldn't be able to cover court costs.
I have a collection here at home, it is on CDs. Many radio stations digitize their CDs by loading them onto harddrives as part of their daily program. It is cheaper.
At this point, I guaran-damn-tee someone will bring up the "radio stations pay royalties" point.
Why do they pay royalties? Because the listeners might not have purchased a copy of the music being broadcast, and the station is running advertisements to make money. That first is especially important here. With radio, the listener more often than not does not have a legally-acquired copy of the songs being played, therefore the station has to pay for public broadcast of that music to people who haven't paid for the music.
Now, we come to my.mp3.com. I didn't use it, so I don't know if the client and any web pages involved in selecting songs had ads, or if the service itself cost anything - if so, mp3.com loses on that point for profiting from to copyrighted works without providing proper royalties to the copyright holders.. I'll come back to this point with regard to the punishment.
my.mp3.com and each listener legally purchased the CDs. Each listener had to prove they had the CDs before they could stream the songs from mp3.com. Therefore, both streamer and listener have legal copies, unlike traditional radio. This is where the radio argument falls down; my.mp3.com is not like radio. I can do the same thing by ripping my own CDs, setting up a shoutcast/icecast streamer, but requiring a password to activate the streaming so that not just any joe schmoe can abuse my collection. It's not public broadcast, and as long as no advertising without copyright holder approval is inserted, it can't be subject to broadcast royalties; you're all listening to the same song, it's a private directcast unlike radio that no one else can tap into, and all parties involved have paid for their copies and associated fair use rights. The only potential extra copy being made is the bits being sent from my.mp3.com to the listener, and those fall right back into the ether as soon as the player is done with them; they are not being stored.
Of course, the bigger reason the record cartel is going after MP3.com for this is so that they don't have any outside competition in the streaming arena; just watch as they all throw up their own Beam-it style services Real Soon Now. And you can bet they'll cost money to use.
mp3.com should be forced to compensate companies for any ad revenue/subscription fees they made in relation to my.mp3.com. On this point, I don't think "copyright infringment" is the proper term here. Unfortunately, I'm not sure there's a proper legal term for "unlawful profit from use of a copyrighted work". Copyright infringment sounds too much like selling extra copies, while here everyone had a copy, paid for them, and the only extra "copy" was a stream of bits that disappeared after passing through the player software.
Cyberspace is not meatspace, and should not be defined or limited by meatspace rules, because there are about 6 billion things you can do in cyberspace that are impractical or impossible in meatspace. Millions of copies of a chunk of data can be made and wiped out in a matter of seconds; this, I think, is the reality that nearly everyone - record execs, real-worlders, and geeks - still haven't come to fully realize. It works by different rules by default; therefore, it's absurd to force ethereal, ever-changing and infinitely malleable cyberspace to conform completely to meatspace rules. The implementation shouldn't be the problem here, only proper compensation. I don't think compensation here = $25k/CD, not by a long shot. A better solution would be to determine the ad revenue from my.mp3.com, double that, there's your punishment to be divided between all plaintiffs. Anything more is improper.
my.mp3.com was a great idea. If there hadn't been an ad near any part of the service, the record companies wouldn't have a legal leg to stand on. Never mind that a lot of legal wisdom and commonly-used analogy collapses when applied to bits, bytes and data structures that can be created and destroyed at will; law and the human habit of making bad comparisons will have the hardest time adjusting to the new world. As it stands, the cartel (actually, the artists, but that's another hill of beans) has a right to be properly compensated for money made off their holdings, but not for any sort of "piracy"; all copies (with the possible exception of one) were meatspace-defined legal.
What a mess. I guess in closing, I think lot of IP law will have to be rethought and retooled to ensure that what can be done in cyberspace isn't stifled by meatspace rules that make no sense in the ethereal. As long as the holders have been paid for copies and fair use rights, and are being compensated for any ad/subscription revenue, there shouldn't be a problem.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
The case on the RIAA/MPAA vs. God for creating organisms with ears, eyes, and memory, is still pending.
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Any lawyer could have told them that what they were up to was illegal before they did the R&D - betting your company's existance on beating a legal challenge is not good business practice.
/. about how innovative my.mp3.com was despite all their technology having been depolyed months before my.mp3.com by myplay.com.
mp3.com knew the risks...
Of course they did get all the free PR - something that legal systems like myplay.com seem to be3 missing out on. So much so that I keep seeing posts on
give credit where credit is due....
Fine, is there a cddb.com like database we can check to see if the CD we're about to buy is represented by UMG?
Would it be viable if we only went to Cheapo Records from now on and only bought USED CDs? I mean, money's changed hands already, and I don't see how they'd profit off a sale of a used CD for less.
Mp3.com may very well be guilty under the law of copyright infringement. They do indeed seem to have distributed copyrighted works they didn't secure a license for.
However, compensatory damages could arguably be a sum total of.... $0. Why? If you're looking at lost revenues, then EVERYONE they distributed to ALREADY had the CD in hand. Everyone distributed to either already had purchased, or had the power to create unauthorized copies without the help of mp3.com. There is no such thing as the sale of a recording lost to mp3.com's service. So why any judge should award compensatory damages is beyond me. Absolute worst case scenario should be that mp3.com might have to give up the some large portion of an estimate of the amount of revenue they received from the BeamIt service.
Now, punitive damages might be different story....
Tweet, tweet.
I never did agree to their new artist agreement- slashdotter mp3.com artists, don't agree to it, it gives mp3.com perpetual rights to your stuff and is unilaterally changeable by mp3.com on five days notice and _you_ have to keep hunting for notices, they won't actually _inform_ you of a change. Anyhow _I_ didn't agree to this and I'm now busily taking over for what they used to do for me, with a twist.
I'll be getting rid of the mp3.com site ASAP- go ahead and download anything if you want but I don't expect to get a cent from this or from any current CD sales. The other local bands ought to be happy 'cos I tend to monopolise the top 20 charts in my town *g* sometimes my stuff has _been_ the top 20. Now they can feel like rockstars- paying a damned high price for it with that dangerous artist agreement. Again, mp3.com is no longer safe to host your music at- they're not as bad as farmclub but they could be just as bad in five days flat with no direct notice to you.
I've ordered a CD burner- and I'm making an order for 100 Mitsui gold/gold _printed_ CD-Rs. We're talking over three dollar media here- $3.29 _per_ _blank_. I'm setting up a situation where I have a 'house label' with _extremely_ posh impressive media and packaging- which has a lighter area, to silkscreen or simply _write_ in specific information about the CD. The place I'm getting the CDs from is synthemedia.com, let me get my orders in first now ;) there are some lovely details about this arrangement, for instance the full-bleed printed-white-surface CDs not only look terrific but Mitsui gold/gold is supposed to have better archival status than even commercial aluminum CDs, lasting for over 100 simulated years in destructive climate testing.
The neatest part is- instant super small pressing runs with flashy packaging. I'm going to start fishing for recording studio business at my usual $75 an hour- and each hour gets a free fancy CD of the final project. (haven't worked out the details on stuff like 'burn time' for large numbers of CDs- should talk to my bank about financing a duplicator if it becomes a serious constraint). For advertisement I can have a bunch of the CDs around town, with an audio demo recorded on it.
The overall idea is to assault the major label industry machine on a basis of quality- hit them with the appearance of indie CDs coming out, that are not only higher quality audio, but are flashier CD prints (a lot of major label CD prints seem to be one or two color prints! Cheap bastards...) and a range of music availability that (due to extremely low production runs) can afford to be absurdly eclectic and specialised- and the media is rated to last much longer under normal conditions- AND you're allowed to copy it and make mp3s of it and put it on your computer for noncommercial use- 'fair use'. (*g* I'm tempted to start talking in terms of warranty replacement of media. What kind of warranty do you get on major label releases? ;) )
Looks like airwindows will finally start to come into its own with all this- I have to be grateful to mp3.com for going down in flames at this time, because it gave me the massive kick in the butt to stop thinking like a musician (wanting to buy a Yamaha DX7 and rebuild my fretless electric guitar) and start thinking like a studio owner/indie label (buying the MEANS OF PRODUCTION). Looks like it's about time to revise airwindows.com to focus on the stuff I'll be doing along these lines, too. It's more fun sweeping the floor when it's your own store ;) and I hope to be doing stuff that slashdotters will find insanely cool.
Thanks mp3.com- it's been real- hope your bigwigs have good golden parachutes. Thanks for the $260, keep the change, and who _did_ you get to write up that new artists' agreement? Universal lawyers?
MP3.com did have an honest business distributing music in the MP3 format, and the RIAA was unable to touch them. That business involved distributing MP3s by musicians with the musicians' permission. It was great, too, and it openly defied the "music industry" while the industry could only look on in total frustration and impotence, not having a single legal argument against them.
And then mp3.com did something incredibly stupid: they started their my.mp3.com service, and "beamed" MP3s by musicians who were not signed with mp3.com. That was begging for trouble. I wish they had spun this ridiculous idea off to another company, since now the totally legitimate parts of mp3.com are now endangered by huge settlements.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
There's a reason why programmers buy houses in Silicon Valley and major label musicians file for bankruptcy- programmers are paid for what they do, and major label musicians are not (if they have attack dog lawyers, like Metallica, and a really hard-nosed business sense, they have a better chance, though they still won't be in the same income bracket as the comparable tech professional)
Oh, and musicians don't necessarily get money from their works after they die, either. Though the power-grab assigning copyright to the labels forever seems to have been disabled AFAIK (due to much lobbying by high profile artists like Don Henley), artists still don't own their mechanicals- the 'masters'- just (hopefully) ownership of the song itself- and even then, only after 20 years when the label can't hang onto it any longer.
Frankly I think we'd be better off paid _your_ way: a flat salary, something nice and cushy but nothing like winning the lottery. We already have the 'my work belongs to the company' part ;) (no, I'm not actually a major label artist _really_ ;) )
- The lawsuit is not about any particular format. MP3.com copied 45,000 copyrighted CDs onto computer servers. Whether the copies on the servers are in MP3 or any other format is irrelevant -- the suit is about the unauthorized copying and has little to do with technology at all.
(emphasis mine)...
However, MP3.com does not own the rights to most, if any, of those 45,000 albums, and it had no right to copy them into a digital music library without getting authority from the people who own the copyrights.
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Argh, I can't find the text of Rakoff's ruling anymore, but yes, he agreed with the RIAA on that point.
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Don't distribute music (you don't have rights to) to people who already paid for the music?
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Oh, rubbish. When you form a company you get a lawyer. They knew they were breaking the law, they just went ahead and did it anyway. The fact that you and countless others think this law is wrong is irrelevant. You don't break the law as a business unless you're a damned idiot or a plain crook. Either way, MP3.com is hardly coming out of this smelling of roses.
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It's a
-- Danny Vermin
Yes, Sturgeon's Law still applies, and most unsigned acts are unsigned because they suck. But with thousands and thousands of acts to choose from, and the option of pre-listening via MP3 (with the artists' explicit consent), it's not hard to find the good stuff, either.
What the record companies are afraid of isn't piracy. It's the loss of mindshare and their inability, as large bureaucracies, to manage a future music business full of tens of thousands of performers with relatively small audiences instead of a hundred or so industry acts. What we're seeing is the battle between the music industry and the emergence of net-empowered musicians. The future belongs not to a few acts with millions of fans, but to many acts with thousands of fans.
It will be a shame if this is delayed -- it can hardly be stopped at this point -- by the music "industry".
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Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Used CD's. The store gets paid for their effort in bringing buyers and sellers together, and they get a bit more on top of that. This is completely legitimate. Yet they're still profiting from other's copyrighted works without permission.
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There is something called FAIR USE
That's right... there IS something called fair use, but it doesn't allow redistribution, which is exactly what mp3.com was doing.
MP3.com may not have had the right to copy this music...
That's not the point. They have that right under fair use. What they don't have the right to do is redistribute the music, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. That is why they were sued and lost.
Radio stations pay good money to broadcast music, regardless of how many people listen to them, and how many of those own, or don't own, their own copy of that music. It's nice that my.mp3.com was trying to cover their butts by insisting that you have the CD in your CD-ROM drive (once... which brings up the whole borrowing a CD for a couple minutes issue), but they were still redistributing the music without consent.
I don't like the implications, but they really blew the pooch by not consulting with a knowledgable copyright/IP lawyer first.
Eric
2) My intention was to point out a case where it's legal to profit from someone else's copyrighted songs.
Yes, the laws say that mp3.com was wrong. I think the laws should be changed.
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Until then, I will continue scouting for mp3 hosting sites to let _them_ deal with the risk of this kind of squeeze- if there are any out there which don't have insane clickthrough contracts. I'm a dangerous client- I can read. *g* I swear, too many of these damned contracts and agreements seem to assume the artist doesn't have a functioning brain...
It doesn't matter whether or not the users of Beam-It had the 'right to listen' to the music, what matters is whether or not mp3.com had the right to distribute the music. Your 'right to listen' is non-existent as a legal concept. The only right the court is concerning itself with is the right to broadcast, which mp3.com (rather stupidly) neglected to acquire.
Think about it, when radio stations broadcast, they don't care whether or not the listeners already have a license to listen to the tunes, but you can bet your sweet hind end that they care about whether or not they have a right to broadcast those same tunes over the air
Why don't we go for 15 minutes without thinking about Microsoft? Is that ok with you? Think you can handle it? Different case, different situation, different judge, different crime. Got it?
If I only had access to first-tier music distribution, I'd:
In the end, that's probably a win for the big music distributors. What little they'd lose in revenue from the non-mainstream music loving public they'd more than make up for in being able to more accurately predict music buying trends.
I'm pretty sure this is what they've figured out too, and they're working on that future.
Gotta go have some doubleplus goodthoughts.
This is the voice of World Control. I bring you Peace.
I bought a portable CD player the other day. I wouldn't have bought it if it weren't for the CD's that RIAA produces. The manufacturer profited from the RIAA's music by allowing me to listen to the RIAA's music in more places. The manufacturer didn't have an agreement with the RIAA to profit from their works. Yet they did it anyway.
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The only way the my.mp3.com service could be legal would be if it was operated by a not-for-profit entity, and even then, it would be heavily challenged in court.
Kinda for the same reason I can't hold a party in which is sponsors where I make money and play a bunch of music foreveryone, even if I check to see if they bought the cd's themselves.
I don't know what world you live in, but my people call them bars or dance clubs.
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At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
I produce IP on a fixed salary, but both me and the company are opposed to copy protection. Why? Mainly because it's a pain in the ass.
Also, if someone is unable to backup their software because of copy protection, then when their hard disk goes bad, or the monthly Windoze reinstall reformats it, and they lose their stuff, it would be our fault instead of theirs.
You can't have copy protection and still allow for Fair Use. There just isn't any way to do it, whether it's software, music, movies, or whatever.
Note: if someone took advantage of the lack of copy protection in our products, and actually went ahead and infringed, and we found out about it, we'd be all over them like make up on Tammy Faye Baker.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Does anyone know if MP3.com was charged per-CD in their MyMP3 database or was it per download of songs? IMO it seems that an infringement would have occurred only when the song was downloaded but it seems from reading the news stories that they were charged for every title in their database, regardless of whether the CD or song was actually used or not. Doesn't distribution have to occur to commit infringement?
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Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
Of course the next step is to shut down those personal storage sites, which will occur right about when someone realizes they can transfer files between the lockers and suddenly you don't have to worry about download times on Napster anymore.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
free money for the labels, but since this isn't from the sale of records, it won't go to the artists, and they will get fucked yet again.
- daniel
- daniel
Turn off your computer and go outside
Of course, it's nearly impossible for the 18yo to prove they won't drink it themselves, thus the law. But if they could, I don't see any problem with it.
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That having been said, I personally think the $118M is awfully high (and should be knocked down on appeals). A copyright violation should only be considered when a my.mp3.com user downloaded an mp3. I imagine the damages in that case would be much lower. But what do I know. Turning lead into gold (turning "copyright violations" into cash) isn't my area of expertise.
- A.P.
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"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
> friends, co-workers, kids, and what not? These are the people using services like BeamIT.
Well-said.
In a spirit of vicious irony, I present the following sample from NWA's "100 Miles and Runnin'":
For you young 'uns who don't remember, NWA is where Dr. Dre's got his start in 1989-1990. What goes around comes around.I mean, there goes a ton of their investment capital into the pocket of Universal.
Then again, they couldn't have been too bright in the first place if they thought they were going to get away with this.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Exactly. While people may like to look at the poor shareholders (who admittedly got screwed by mp3.com's poor decision), I'm feeling more sorry for those independent artists who were using mp3.com to distribute (or just give people a place to hear) their music. I personally have found plenty of very good stuff there (like Basque...mmmm) If this ends up being the end of mp3.com they're the ones who are really getting hurt.
Gee... you'd almost think the RIAA had some sort of interest in seeing mp3.com fail and just happened to get lucky thanks to my.mp3.com....
They don't need permission from anyone to copy the music for their own internal use, according to non-RIAA fair-use interpretation (and contrary to YOUR opinion, fully in line with society & court decisions).
They DID violate distribution rights (from what I've read, they were trying the "quantum" version of information theory - if you can't tell the difference between US doing the copy, or the USER doing the copy, then there is no difference) - which the judge laughed at, just before he threw the book at them...
The difference is that myplay only provided the space for people to store mp3's which they extracted on their own. The copyright violation takes place during the distribution and unauthorisded ripping.
;-)
The share feature is like a radio station, your playlist sequencing has to comply with the radio rules i.e. you can't legally put up the whole of dark side of the moon or some similar album.
Oh.... and myplay is usable over netscape on linux - my.mp3.com kept crashing on me.....
Hey... they even use icecast - so I'm happy
The reason for the large damages? The judge wants to deter other people from "infringing on copyrighted materials". Anyone notice a drop in music sharing? Anyone? Bueller?
This is really stupid and I hope MP3.com approves it. There was already an analysis of the My MP3 protocol put up. There was no way to infringe. Period. MP3 is shelling out twenty five thousand dollars per CD - payment for what? If this is the modern definition of compensatory damages, I'm shocked.
It is currently very trendy in the legal circles to slam a technology company. These judges want to get a name. (I defended copyrights, can I be a Supreme court judge?) to get higher in their career as poloticians. Is it very obvious as to what is happening, and the mp3.com case was very weak at best. Napster is going to get slammed hard, and then they will try to go after hotline, and all the other "sharing" and "warez" systems that have been here a long time. NOW, if gnutella is able to Hash the searches and transfers or make it impossible to pin down who is offering what (disallow any identity in the system and set up "reflectors" for requests) things will go smoothly.
I dont care what judge you are and what army you have, you will never stop the sharing of music. We will always have tapes, cd-burners, etc... and the poor teenagers and college students, that when they get older will buy more audio, will probably think twice about actually buying that CD, based on the actions of the industry.
I know that I will never give money to a Country Club again, after the crap pulled on me in college. (Golfers are snooty buttheads anyways) and my son will think twice about giving a RIAA company money, after the shaft they give to the fans and artists.
It's a choice of the lesser of two evils.. and they are more evil than copying.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Maybe they should see if they could pay in stock options! that way Universal would atleast to be forced to take a look at MP3.com's buisness model, something they have obviously not done yet :)
2) Businesses ARE allowed to make money from the RIAA's music without permission. For instance:
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The investors behind the company would have considered these things too, and nixed the project if they thought it was illegal and therefore a financial risk. I'm sure they had lawyers look at it. Maybe they should sue their own lawyers for giving them bad advice.
And if they really didn't think about it until they got sued, well, even then they could have bailed out, shut the service down, and settled out of court with the RIAA. If they knew they were breaking the law and had no chance of winning the lawsuit, that's the only thing that would have made sense.
Therefore, even after they were sued, they must have believed they would win in court. Nothing else makes sense!
If you believe they knew they were breaking the law and would lose the lawsuit, maybe you can explain: Why would they do anything that suicidal? Why didn't they settle out of court? What did they possibly hope to gain?
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
As much as I hate to say it, MP3.com was engaging in distributing copyrighted material without permission and deserve to lose the case. I think it can be easily argued however that the penalty was too large. I also believe that the fault lies with the government and its inability to establish laws dealing with these issues before they erupt like they have. At the same time however it doesn't give someone the right to violate other's rights because it's over the internet.
"It's comin' back around again..." -RATM
For the actual law, see the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, Chapter 10, Section 1004(b).
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Oh, that's simple. People were downloading music.
Someone said "Hey, this is wrong"
People suddenly came up with a lame excuse, "Uhh, yeah.... well we're doing it because you ain't giving enough profits to the artists!"
Some other dude said "Yeah! Yeah! What he said."
Granted, this could be hacked pretty easily. But I'm sure the majority of users wouldn't know how, so I'm at a bit of a loss to see where the willful loss is here.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Get a fucking life, Mr Whois. We all have to make a living somehow.
--
It's a
-- Danny Vermin
Founder's Camp
Founder's Camp
News for non-Nerds. Stuff that matters.
It wasn't public performance.
Yes it is. 'Public' is not necessarily plural. Go follow the link and learn what words mean in this context.
Thank God this Judge had some common sense. The advent of MP3 has been nothing more than a world wide conspiracy of THEFT of artistic rights from copyright holders. How dare MP3.com feel that they could wrench away control of an artist's work. The arrogance of it all makes me sick. Artists deserve the right to control their intellectual property, i.e., their art. Napster & MP3.com have been the #1 enemy of those that create by stealing those creations and giving it to those that feel everything in life should be free -- and making a buck to boot off that theft!!!
Well, the horse you're quoting is the RIAA, not the judge, and it's quite contrary to the law as written. If the judge's opinion turns out to be based on the above statements, then Mp3.com's appeal should be pretty easy.
Again, this assumes that mp3.com owns the CDs that they used to build their library. If they built their library by other means, then I am wrong.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The RIAA went ape-shit over them sending electronic version of CD's they owned in streaming form to consumers.
Streaming audio to those consumers who have paid for it is obviously where the industry is going. The simple solution to the RIAA's problem of people ripping/sharing CD's is not to sell CD's any more! Instead, the consumer will buy a license to stream the audio off some server whenever they like.
Now whoever offers this service will make a mint of money as people pay various monthly fees for various "packages" as per cable TV, etc. And the RIAA obviously wants to be the only game in town when that day comes, so you can count on them jumping hard, onto the spine of anyone who tries to set up any service similar to this.
Do NOT try to go into an honest business distributing music in the MP3 format. It will only get you sued into oblivion. Instead, trade MP3s illegally.
Or so this case would make it seem.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Why should they be sued for profiting from other's copyrights without permission? These people do it legally:
--
ah.. but whereas MS only fucked some consumers up the ass without lubricant, MP3.com actually had the NERVE to have tried to bend the revenue-stream of a company. Can't have that.. how else are politicians going to survive if they can't get their money from industry?
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
stop copyright infringement, turn off caching in your browser. Good luck telling me to stop it. Geez.. they're stupid enough to try.. actually.. they'll just sue netscape and MS, for allowing caching of copyrighted documents in the first place.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Exactly. If you think about it, really, this is much more willful infringement than Napster: they ripped the CDs, put them on a jukebox, and offered them to the public without permission as part of a commercial service with ads.
I would really like to know why they played into the RIAA's hands so foolishly. The only thing I can think of is that they may have wanted to use this to kill SDMI dead, and they may have figured that they'd get all the labels to settle. But it was a pretty dangerous thing to do, when they really didn't have to.
sulli
sulli
RTFJ.
IANAL. IF MP3 has done anything wrong, it is from their profiting off of the illegal distribution of copyrighted material. In that case, I can see their having to pay out any earned [advertisement] revenue's based on the market they've created.
Somehow I'm doubting that they really earn $400 million or even $100 million purely based on these advertisements. I could be wrong, I don't know how much advertising pulls in these days.
-Michael
This verdict is a good thing. It will make people realize that if a company or individual (ie Napster) does something, they can be held responsible for it, however if society at large does something (ie Gnutella, Freenet) then it will become a trend.
There's no question to me that the original intent behind Napster was to pirate music over the internet. I make no value judgment here, that's the truth. The supplemental benefit of getting some unheard artists a quick listen is beside the point. So now people use Napster as a "resource" to download music before they buy it...but this is something that's already available via real audio or other such media files on various online resale merchants. sarcasmEither that, or god forbid, you might actually have to go to a record store! My lord no. Please. Stop this now! /sarcasm
My problem with Napster is actually my problem with the RIAA (who by the way are worthy of a fate far worse than death). The artists don't see enough of the profits from a CD. And that's why we've flocked to Napster and Gnutella and the like.
This verdict is a good one. It will force the masses to the free versions of Gnutella and such. It will still force the RIAA to reconsider micropayment schemes and other such problems of intellectual property, but if it makes us think, then it is a good and fair verdict.
So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.
This is the same logic for going after 2600 in the MPAA lawsuit. Yeah DeCSS is EVERYWHERE, but when they release the successor to DVD, they will have a precedent to stop any reverse engineering of it. Keeping in mind, of course, they had a better chance of winning against 2600 (those EVIL hackers who do such things as posting security problems in a public forum, just like Microsoft does over at Bugtraq) than say the NYTimes. Even wonder why news organizations weren't in the lawsuit? They have better lawyers.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Mp3.com did NOT rent out what they had "copied". You had to have proved you had the CD in your own little ocmputer, or had bought the CD from one of their partners, before you could listen to mp3.com's CD.
Let me repeat that: You had to have your own copy of teh CD before you could listen to mp3.com's copy.
So where's the rental? Where's the theft?
--
Infuriate left and right
why a legal webcasting system will never be made unless you sleep with the RIAA. The RIAA is really silly, since all of the publicity about getting free MP3's via these websites have been made, more and more Joe Sixpack people are finding out where to download these programs.
Message to RIAA: Lawyers and these silly court decisions are sucking you dry!
Sig it.
I just saw this site called Ace-MP3. They actually sell CD-R's of MP3's on it. They have 12,500 albums to choose from (and we're talking about good ones, and 'copyrighted' ones too)
You can mix and match albums. It costs $25 for 1 CDR, (about 10 albums on that CDR they say). However it comes down to about $5 a CDR if you buy enough of them.
Check out the stats: 12,500 albums, 550 GB!
AND they claim that they're paying ASCAP licensing fees, so it's all legit! I can't believe it. If this is true... why haven't we heard of this place?!!! I can't believe it, personally. Coming from Russia, makes it less believable too, but they sure are acting like it's the real deal. I'm interested in any info anyone has!
Rader
I've always wondered, is there a difference in penalty for WILLFUL and UNWILLFUL violations? Really, I imagine there isn't..
Of course there's a difference. We recognize the motive in many crimes that are prosecuted -- if you kill someone by accident you'll probably get less time than if you do it on purpose.
Similarly, if you accidentally copy something (say you don't realize that what you're doing is a copyright violation), you'll likely be told to stop doing it.
If you do it over and over after being told to stop (and being informed it's a violation of copyright), it's pretty clear you're doing it IN SPITE of the law, and you'll get a harsher penalty...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
With how sick i am of hearing about mp3 distribution sites losing to music megaindustry in general i think they should gather about $118 million in pennys and air drop them all from half a mile up over the recording studios. Dont think the music industry will ever ask for another cent after that.
Yet despite all the controversy i still to this day have no trouble finding a MP3 or a copy of DeCSS on the internet, glad to see the legal system is as effective as always.
-its not a rule, until somebody breaks it too many times
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise. -Fight Club
Judge Rakoff referenced the lawsuit Castle Rock vs. Carol Publishing where a company produced a book of trivia from the Seinfeld show. The book had a lot of direct quotes from the show. Carol Publishing Group lost the case and had to stop publishing the trivia book.
But if you look at it, the public had already payed (through advertisements) for the right to view Seinfeld. Yet the public wasn't legally allowed to view the copyrighted works in another form (the trivia book) without Seinfeld being further compensated.
In this case, the judge decided that it's even worse that the copyrighted works weren't even slightly modified.
Copyright law gives the copyright holder the exclusive right to benefit from the copyrighted works. Since MP3.com was making money from the songs being in MP3 form even though the consumers had already bought the CD's, it was obvious that the MP3's have further financial value, and that the RIAA were the only ones who should have benefited from that additional demand since they still held the copyright.
--
AFAIK, the problem comes in when a company does it for the public and profits from it without compensating the copyright holders of the Seinfeld show.
So, you are allowed to listen to the music in any form you want to, but an outside company can't profit from helping you listen to the music, unless they have a deal with the RIAA.
--
You don't allow OTHER people to make copies of your copies. mp3.com did. It's not cut and dried - it's a gray area. mp3.com knew they were on shaky legal ground when they started, and they lost. Sort of...
Everwhere else you pay damages if damage has been done, and only as much as the damage was (that's why it's called that way). Not so in the USA...
Would you feel the same way if Universal got to copy my 'indie' albums which I own, and broadcast them out to people, making it seem as if they are 'Universal' albums?
I concede that the my.mp3.com service is relatively innocuous- I would have a 'wait and see' attitude if even Universal tried to do something like that with my stuff (a 'timeshifting', 'spaceshifting' sort of thing). However, enough of that stuff, or the wrong sort of 'fair use' (FOR profit, IMPLYING an association that doesn't exist, WITHOUT consent of any sort) and Universal starts to look like the GATEKEEPER, and people looking for 'Rain Dragon' (currently legally available only on Napster! :) ) are led to believe they must go through Universal to get it.
That, I would object to, because I hate the major labels thoroughly. So I can't be _too_ protective of my.mp3.com: so much of what mp3.com was doing was good and legitimate. The ripping of all those major label CDs was not, and they're suffering the consequences of their choice to not attempt to communicate. They have also made the terms for any FUTURE spaceshifting site much, much worse by their actions. If they hadn't changed their artist contract I would _still_ be with them even so- but I have never felt my.mp3.com was a sensible move. The idea is good but so mishandled! You can't run around doing stuff like that without talking to the content producers. Even if it's just a bunch of corporate droids, it's _still_ wrong not to ping them about what you're doing with 'their' content.
US Code Title 17, Section 106 lays out the sorts of things that a copyright holder is allowed to do, and no one else is. They're along the lines of exclusive right to reproduction, exhibition, and the like.
Nowhere in copyright law does it mention the exclusive right to profit from one's copyright.
For instance, copyright holders don't benefit from the lending or sale of used works.
--
Unless or until I find another good place to host that stuff (I'm batting 0 for 3 now, still with no luck at all)...
Napster is the only legal way to get my music online. And that state of affairs might persist for a while... I certainly cannot afford to do it on my own airwindows.com site, and I'm not seeing whole bunches of indie mp3 sites, much less ones that make some pretense of paying me like mp3.com did. So it's Napster or... silence...
*g* I just get a huge kick out of this for some reason. I guess it's my sick humor or something. "Oh please Judge Marilyn, don't hurt my only remaining way to legally distribute my music over the net! I beg of you!" Think that'd work? *hah!*
$118M in fines sounds like a lot of damages - in fact it sound like a lot more money that can conceivably have been incurred by UMG. So are these punitive damages then? Given that market sales continue to rocket up despite all the RIAA media spin that seems to give the impression that the arrival of MP3s is the end of the world as they know it and that they are already having to beg on street corners in order to pay for the Ferrari, I'm not sure where this figure has come from.
Given that MS gets fined $1M dollars for attempting to put a company out of business by pulling a bait-and-switch, doesn't look like the world is flat on a legal basis does it? The software industry easily pulls into the $100Billion dollar category so I can't believe the stakes are 100 times higher for UMG...
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
$118 certainly sounds a little too less. I wonder if that's even enough to pay for one meal of a UMG executive?
Or do you mean $118 MILLION? ;)
MP3.com was distributing mp3's to users who already owned the CD's, so the copyright holders were getting their money.
MP3.com was making money for providing access to someone else's intellectual property, yes. But ISP's also make money for providing more convenient access to other's IP. That's value added, so I personally think it's okay to make money then.
MP3.com shouldn't have to pay, it hasn't been shown that anyone was harmed.
--
I saw an envelope in my parents house today with "KEEP (re jargon!)" handwritten on addressed to the Company Secretary, My Father's Name, His Address...No company mentioned. I had to peek inside (they often leave computer related junk mail around for me to see/dump) and saw it was from the Irish Music Rights Orgainsation. Now my father's main business (based at home) is software development and has family members as occassional employees beyond himself. I just had to include the full text/html (all emphasis theirs) of the two pages because they are such incredible reading but in brief summary they are requesting that as public music in work requires a licence, they want a declaration on music use in the place of business and the equipment (including private)......Read on...
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
But, you can't give it to anyone else. "the copy or phonorecord is retained and used solely by the transmitting organization that made it, and no further copies or phonorecords are reproduced from it"
--
The other question basically is, do independent labels stand a chance in the current environment but will they become much more popular in one in which the music of an independent label is freely distributed, copied, and used by the consumer where the Industry Music is locked down?
I fully admit I am more attracted to underground bands, even when their 'underground' status is actually part of marketing. Who would care about a song if it couldn't be completely enjoyed in all its potential forms?
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
Did the major record labels forget these things too?
i can still get mp3s of albums that I don't own, by uploading other mp3s of albums I don't own all thanks to audiogalaxy, and mp3.lycos.com
and what about the vqf audio format, sure it's not as widely supported, but it seems to be okay to use. It's not part of the whole MP3 CONTROVERSY.
I think the owner of http://www.vqf.com/ should make a similar service, and wait and see what happens.
[mrzer0]
When you pirate MP3's, you're downloading Communism! Well I guess that makes me a Commie.
uNF!
Fair use my arse. We're talking about a company distributing copyright material without permission. You should be thanking MP3.com for knowingly violating copyright law and putting themselves, and you, into this position.
--
It's a
-- Danny Vermin
There is some truth in what you say, but you miss some important points. First-- developers like myself are paid by salary, not through some enormously complex royalty scheme like the record industry. I am paid the same as long as I do my job. There is no need for me to produce a "hit", and hence no need for a gigantic internet-programmer-record-label system to promote my work to the masses. Why don't musicians get paid salary? Why are they allowed to collect money from their works a zillion years after they die while my work as a programmer is of no use to me after I write it in most cases? I do not depend on copyright for income. Nor does my company. We depend on the ability to sell our custom software services to other people.
Second, most of my work is web programming that is quite easily available for download and study against the wishes of my company already. That's how the web design works-- my DHTML, javascript, etc... are all right there in your browser whether my company likes it or not.
Should we sue browser makers for including a "view source" button? All of our pages are copyrighted! What about the "save image to file" button? Or the ability to save the web page source to your hard drive? We are a profitable and quickly growing web company with hundreds of employees and 5 or 6 offices (I can never remember), yet our copyrighted works sit freely downloadable for the entire world.
Your argument that wages depend on copyright does hold some merit, but our copyrighted works are totally unprotected and my mom could "pirate" them with a mouse click, yet we have a very successful business model.
I would question, however, how much this is a _technical_ problem. I can tell you what mp3.com looked like from the viewpoint of an artist earning a few hundreds of dollars on downloads and streaming- I saw a lot more straight downloads than streaming. Of course, this is colored by the fact that I _allowed_ downloads rather than just streaming: but the result is that I still got to observe thousands of song 'hits' of all different types.
Getting slashdotted was always a delight ;) normal volume was much less. Either way, it tended to work out to an emphasis on downloads rather than streaming. This might be affected by the fact that my music was and is the un-easy-listening AOR 'radio station' dribble- if it was more 'lite' I might have seen more use by streaming mp3.com customers. However, I still think what I saw is reasonably representative.
The upshot is this: it'd be a big help if anyone was doing a just plain SERVER for hosting mp3 files- legit ones for the artists. Could a nonprofit organization (such as a 501c3) get past the mp3licensing.com threat of hitting up the hapless site for $15,000 and 1 cent per download minimum? I'm not confident a successful mp3 hosting site offering free downloads and earning money through ad revenue (in other words, your usual site) would be safe from this sort of attack.
I think it's probably time to bite the bullet and scrap any hope of getting musicians paid per download- my thought is, surely legal nonexclusive rights to this sort of content have a value that justifies offering the hosting space free? mp3 files add up: I was at several hundred megs of material when I left mp3.com (all now deleted off their system). iuma limits you to ten songs for presumably this reason, which is a major problem. Many sites (mp3.com, farmclub.com) have ugly contracts, or barely-hidden landmines in the contract just waiting to turn even uglier.
The situation doesn't require computer engineering, it requires social engineering. You either side with the RIAA folks (let's all exploit some artists to line our pockets! How much can we con them out of?) or you start to ask for something like what mp3.com seemed to be- a huge warehouse that hosts music files, charging no rent. It's not expected to promote the artist. It needn't even pay the artist, itself. It simply needs to have the following characteristics:
- no limit on sizes- at all. I have an entire composition that needed to be split to be hosted on mp3.com- 'Extended Play'. Never again.
- contract seeks only nonexclusive rights to only the materials being shared, for the purpose of doing the sharing. The site must _not_ be trying to collect IP.
- If the artist terminates agreement with the site, and deletes the songs/art (if art is even required!) then that material is gone- the site does not hang onto rights to distribute that material for longer than necessary to clear the databases.
- high availability, high bandwidth. The site needs to _be_ there.
That would just about do it. Seemingly appealing options might include stuff like art and fancy pages (which could be a headache, depending on how unified the site is supposed to be. Couldn't it just be a file repository, more efficiently?), or top 40 charts, or message boards. However, these might not be the best thing- on mp3.com these things simply led to griping, extensive cheating of the system and attempts to guess the workings of the system, and a burial of musician communication under 10,000 posts begging "Please download my song" or (I am not making this up) "I will download all the songs on your page if you'll just download this particular one of mine, which I'm trying to get into the charts!".The reason mp3.com changed from what (once) was a very similar system to what I describe, is hubris- Michael Robertson has always had plenty of chutzpah but it turns to over-reaching. It made mp3.com by FAR the biggest site of its kind- no other is even close- but has also destroyed it.
When mp3.com goes down there are going to be an awful lot of musicians looking for mp3 hosting. It's potentially a great positioning for someone who wanted to simply take Really Big Bandwidth And Storage and turn it into the _next_ 'biggest site of its kind'. It's just a question of whether anyone else can execute this strategy without blowing it by overreaching- by trying to out-promise the RIAA labels (HA! Not!) and ending up hopelessly broke, moneylosing and in court.
Does anybody even read the articles?
Why didn't MP3.com start a SEPERATE business for my.mp3.com? Wouldn't it have made alot more sense, considering that what they were doing was very questionable legally, and they KNEW that there would be some legal battle over what they were doing. All the damages accrued on behalf of my.mp3.com is going to pull down mp3.com, which is a great service. Could they have legally formed a seperate company that would have done the same thing but not effect the financial status of mp3.com should it all go down like it has? Is this going to bankrupt mp3.com? bah.
-WG
"America, I smoke marijuana every chance I get."
Looks to me that the RIAA has figure out these lawsuits can be just as profitable as selling music!
:-)
The Music industry has found another "money for nothin" (and your chicks for free!) revenue stream! (Hmm, now 'll probably get sued for using that line...
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
Radio stations don't infringe on copyright.
They do if they don't follow the licensing rules.
Note that nowhere on that link, or at any other similar organization, does it say "None of this applies if you broadcast to people who already own the CD of the song you're playing."
For mp3.com to claim that proving the listener's ownership made them magically exempt from all laws governing public performance always did strike me as pretty questionable legally. I'm totally unsurprised at the decision.
MSNBC
Wired
Yahoo!
ABC News
Enjoy~
If I owned any stock in them, I'd be demanding that they take everyone who went along with it out back and have them shot. Lucky for them, I don't. Lucky for me too; at this point you're probably more likely to get your investment back if you'd been burning it in the fireplace.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Burris
how much do Artists see from that penalty fee? Somehow I think I already know it: 0.00$ Thank you. Well at least the fat boss of can now buy another luxury Yacht in Monaco... Another reason not to buy any music anymore as long as artists and consumers are ripped off by mega-corps with lawyers...
Umm big radio stations get PAID to play the music.
I know this first hand, and I know what crap goes on to try and cripple smaller stations.
If you think a radio station (large one) pays for the music it plays then you are gladly eating the FUD that the riaa feeds you.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It says that the judge is trying to send a message to the "Internet Community" that copyright infringement can not continue.
Who exactly does he think the "Internet Community" is? A limited bunch of hacker punks who are going to see this, get scared, and stop trading MP3?!
Does he not realize that the "Internet Community" is millions strong, and includes his neighbors, friends, co-workers, kids, and what not? These are the people using services like BeamIT.
As long as it's available, everyone will trade music and other media as long as it's practical to do so.
And I agree with previous messages that there really isn't any indication that any copyright infringement ever took place.
This whole situation is just wrong, and MP3.com is getting the shit end of the stick.
My first reaction was that it had to be punitive, since the RIAA's total loss in sales amounted to about $0.00. After all, despite the fact that my.mp3.com was technically distributing copyrighted content without permission, they were sending it to people who already had it. The challenge/response protocol really looked pretty good. I don't think hardly anyone got sent an MP3 from my.mp3.com who didn't already have the CD, unless it involved people sharing accounts, the way some pirates use iDrives, for example.
The problem is that we're fooling ourselves by just looking at album sales. RIAA didn't lose album sales, but they did lose royalties. For example, when the radio plays a song, they don't get off the hook for paying royalties just because you, the listener, happen to already own the album.
Could the lost royalties possibly add up to $118M? That's mind-bogglingly hard to believe, and still suggests that most of the damages are punitive. But I dunno... Consider that they are doing point-to-point transmissions instead of, say, MBONE broadcasts. What if each transmission is required to have the same amount of royalty paid that a radio station would pay (even though there's only one listener)? If so, then it is actually conceivable that they could accrue royalty liabilities at a rate several orders of magnitude faster than a radio station would.
Just something to think about. I don't know if the $118M figure was just pulled out of someone's ass or what, but it seems possible to me that it might be more compensatory that it first appears.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Well, it has to be said with just about every /. story, so I guess it's my turn. RTFA. A lot of people are saying, "boy I'm pissed, how did they lose any money?". The fine is NOT damages. This is not compensatory payment. Right in the article, it says: "Universal had not alleged damages". These are punitive damages, meant "to send a message of deterrence".
On another note, to clarify how this is different from you uploading your music to i-Drive and listening to it from there. First of all, there is the difference that i-Drive doesn't know what you're uploading-- they just provide space. Second, you actually have to upload the file to i-Drive, which is time consuming. MP3.com is saying, "here, since we already know what you're going to upload, let's save you the time". But that's where they get into trouble, because they're using Universal's property (the music) to provide a service to you.
They could have stuck to working with indie artists and distributing their music. I still think that business model has potential. I've bought several great CDs from them, at well under what they would have cost at a music store.
Of course, that business model would probably work even better with Ogg Vorbis files -- no patent royalties to Frauhauf.
Oh well. Someone will come along and fill that niche.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?