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Shielding MP3 Databases From Copyright Violations
Lost Soul writes: "Wired has an article on a
new law being proposed in the United States House of Representatives to immunize databases of songs a la mp3.com from copyright violations that are now plaguing the company and giving recording companies licensing fees they don't deserve. Please signal your support for this bill to your local representatives." It would protect databases that people could get access to if they had already purchased the CDs, as my.mp3.com was set up to do.
It is about time that the legal status of this stuff was really cleared up bigtime. When I purchase a CD or a Video or a Book or a ... I regard this as the purchase of a license to use the content for my personal enjoyment in a non commercial setting in whatever manner I care to. If I want to rip a CD to play on my MP3 player in my car or make a tape of it, or use it for skeet practice, this should be ok under the law. If someone facilitates this, they are adding value to the creator of the media by encouraging purchase of the origional license. It takes an extreme amount of effort to create the origional content in many cases. (Example, I am at the end of a 20 min documentary that has taken myself and the other editor roughly 2 mounths of effort to create) The creator of the content should recieve their tithe, but the present position of the MPA and RIAA is an position that is totally greed oriented and does them little credit.
Better dodgy than stodgy.
While I can understand your aversion to bedrooms, I would be personally interested in any recordings from the future. Furthermore, I think the simple fact that the artist had access to a bedroom in the future would make their work worth giving a listen, since most artists seem incapable of recording in bedrooms anywhere except in the past or present...
0x0000
"The Internet is made of cats."
The only problem with throwing up your arms and saying "Well, those kids are gonna infringe copyright laws, anyway, so...lets go ahead and allow them the facilities to do it," is that you're not addressing the moral issue. That's just like handing out condoms in high schools. It doesn't make the problem any better. Isn't there a place in cyberspace for good, old-fashioned honesty?
I just wrote my Rep. Here's the letter I sent, feel free to use it. Go to http://www.house.gov/writerep/ Recently Representative Rich Boucher (D-Virginia) has proposed a bill, The Music Owners' Listening Rights Act of 2000, amending Chapter 1 of title 17, United States Code, following section 122 to strengthen the rights of consumers with respect to downloadable music on the Internet. I fully support this move and hope you do as well. I feel a number of court decisions have misinterpreted existing legislation such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in ways that are highly detrimental to the rights of consumers. Representative Boucher's bill affirms the rights of individual consumers to enjoy the copyrighted works they own in any manner they see fit. Many organizations would like to see further restrictions placed on the consumers' fair use of copyrighted material. This bill does nothing to remove protections for copyrighted material, it just clarifies the intent of congress to ensure that consumers rights are protected. I'm sure that the rights of the consumer are important to you and I urge your support of this bill.
Brilliant, fantastic, amazing idea, I bet mp3.com has it's legal people on this right now.
;-)
the only problem is that they didn't invent the idea - like everything on their site they copied it from another 'innovative' site.
Stilll prior art doesn't seem to have stopped the patent office in the past - so maybe there's still hope for tecyhnology plagiarists like mp3.com
"...provided that the transmission is received only by a recipient who has provided to the transmitting organization proof that the recipient lawfully possesses a phonorecord of such sound recording..."
Proof? Like a digital signature? Lets use the CueCat encryption for this!
I guess I just don't get your analogy. Why do we keep trying to create analogies between physical property and digital property? Why don't we just accept that they are two different things that need to be dealt with differently? Prohibiting a company from making a database of music in order to allow people (who have legally purchased the right to listen to that music) to listen to the music they have purchased wherever they like, after they have proven that they have purchased that right, is asinine. It's just the record companies throwing their weight around and trying to further limit how we can make use of the music that we purchase, as well as extorting money which they are not due. Yes, it's often good that the law is slow to change, but when we see that it needs to change, we should certainly encourage it. That's why I'm sending a similar letter to my congresscritters.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Regardless, they lost on legal grounds. They just managed to minimize the damage by settling with the rest of the companies.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Sony can already make a site and give all their music away for free on it, or any site that is authorized by Sony for such an operation. They dont need a law. They *are* using the existing law to crush their competition, though, so yeah that is sort of slimy, its like stealing your girlfriend and punching you in the stomach too.
edged out, and made noncompetitive by the court decision and royalty agreement. Meanwhile, the industry-backed ventures go ahead without that little boat anchor.
So the new guy on the block, who found the path and showed the way, gets the shaft. The establishment who fought it every step of the way follows the formula and gets the money.
On the side, a little note in Courtney Love's diatribe seemed to indicate that artists don't get any royalties from "clubs". She stated that she feared that artists would get no royalties from the Napster suits, because the industry would consider Napster a "club". Is this true? By participating in a "CD-club" are we depriving the artists of income, and sending ALL of the money to the poor, starving recording houses?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
All the mp3 posts and the comments attached are getting more ridiculous.
If the recording companies don't deserve money for promoting and selling recording than who does.?
Yes they're greedy (the recording companies), but I don't see ANYONE/ doing anything about it, and they do pay the artist, something NAPSTER users ususally ARE NOT doing. All those people using napster who claim the big companies are ripping off artists are stealing more harming the artists more than the companies that risk money investing in them (by providing capital to record._)
They're lots and lots of small labels out there, and they all seem the same. You think if they're was a better way artists would flock too it. I haven't seen a single major musical player yet come out of MP3.com. (not that they're aren't good artists on that company.)
That being said, NAPSTER doesn't bother me as much as the fact that it has all those users , and what it says about peoples respect for other peoples art/music. I think people should be individiually responsible... I used to think the semi / technically savvy were a little more enlightened . They're not and its kinda sad.
Whats new about this way of distibution is the speed. It used to be copy at 1x then 2x tape dubbers, now music is being swapped anonymously over a network. Times have changed, and I think we will see new laws coming up shortly to cover this stuff.
That being said those that work often don't have time to scour the net for music, its cheapper to buy music still. (1/2 of my time is worth.....). I think streaming mp3 is a great thing to suck bandwidth at work, like radio but since radio has gone way downhill and I don't get reception in my building its cds or that.
ISBN's only identify works themselves, not copies. This means that the ISBN's on all copies of a given work will be the same. All it would take would be for someone to compile a big list of ISBN's, and the whole authentication process is circumvented.
There's another way I'd considered, but this keeps the service from being free. It involves sending in the actual CD, along with the cost of shipping it back. Since you can't send in a legal CD if you don't have it, that's about as good as you can get (the CD could have been stolen, but thanks to presumption of innocence that can't be taken into consideration).
Another, possibly equally or more suitable way, would be to send/fax in a photocopy of the disc itself, ot the liners. This has been used in the proprietary software industry for a long time to determine ownership (usually for purposes of upgrade discounts). It can be circumvented, but it's generally more trouble than it's worth to do so.
Any thoughts?
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>Eh? You manage to contradict yourself here since you were talking about taxation earlier.
Not a contradiction in the slightest...
The primary objective is to protect My.MP3
The FTP thing is purely a side effect... and posably the fullest extent of freedom that we'd get from this thing..
Your right in the notion that this is made to LOOK like it's giving us something when it's really just pushing an agenda...
About the paranoia thing... we ALL get parnaoid.. ehhh it's not a bad thing really... Hay I can expect you'll be there when they come to take me away for speaking my mind.. no matter HOW much you disagree with me... And I'll be there if they ever come for you...
Being paranoid about ones freedoms is the healthyest thing...
Anyway... Your right about WHAT they are doing but not WHY they are doing it...
It sounds stupid but they beat you to death becouse they want to protect you from being beaten to death...
People like you need to come along and say "Thats Fsking stupid" and well.. you are...
Anyway... Sorry for being so mean and evil.. but I am and thats all there is....
On yeah... "It dosn't protect Napster" "So"
Ehh thats kinda what the jist of this was... "Ohh finnaly Napster is saved" not even slightly... Woulda been nice... Of course you knew better.. but for the benifit of others I thought I'd mention it...
I don't actually exist.
Like the ones used by those CD names databases would be one way.
I don't know that much about those IDs but a verification system similar to what myMP3.com uses might sufice.
This would be hacked in about 2 days and soon people would be swapping cd ids, but nothing seems foolproof..
what else could you use. An Encrypted licence number with your music CD? This is starting to sound like Circut Cities ill fated DIV-X DVD player that charged per use....
Unfortunately, that means about as much as `information wants to be free` though!
Let's see... how is it theft to compile a database (presumably from purchased CDs), and then allow people to stream that music wherever they happen to be, but only after they have proven that they have purchased the right to listen to the music. Sounds to me like something that should be perfectly legal, but that the record industry doesn't like, and they are, once again, trying to control what people do with the music they purchase after the sale. If you and I both buy the same CD, and then we meet and I hand you my copy and you give me your copy, have we broken the law? That's essentially what my.mp3.com was doing. I think the RIAA's argument is ridiculous.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Actually, they will release the first single, "Original Prankster" and only that single. Sony threatened suit, and they worked out an agreement to continue the promotional giveaway, and Sony agreed to allow one .mp3 to be authorized on the Offspring's site.
So, if the said scan takes place, don't they have to exclude all copies of Original Prankster.mp3 since it's authorized by Sony for distribution on the 'net?
"This amp is special, see all the knobs go up to 11, that means it is one louder than other amps"
Weird Pics
are they the same?
Was MPPP considered broadcasting the music in the final judgement?
thats an interesting question and I can't find the answer.
As an interesting aside, I think there is an extra fee placed on Digital Audio Tapes (DAT) that somehow goes to the music business.
I think canada has that fee on blank CDs.
Does anyone know what other fees we're paying for media?
..which bill protects which database.. The'll find a way to sue 'em anyways...
I'm not really sure what you mean by all this. No "lobbyist" from the Digital Media Association has ever been with in spitting distance of the tech policy makers on the hill. I'm not even sure they have a real lobbyist. A quick poll of House and Senate tech LA's tells me that not one of them has ever heard of the DiMA (unfortunately, six months ago 90% of them had never heard of Linux either, but that's another story)
I am all for (hell, I'm calling for) more lobbyists representing the tech producer/user in Washington, D.C., but it is counter productive to give credit to a group that is not accomplishing anything - it takes attention away from those who may be putting together viable efforts.
MP3.com, not my favorite company, did hire a lobbyist to draft sample legislation, and had the Pres and CEO on heavy rotation in House and Senate offices around the hill asking someone to introduce this bill. There was no pressure, or even a whisper, from any other source in support of legislation like this.
Tech users need to get more organized, the only tech lobbies here now are the companies (and they just want H1-B), and groups like the EFF (good group - no real lobby) and the Center for Democracy in Technology (nice, smart guys but not much direct policy input). The closest we have to a representative is the Consumer Electronics groups, because they want to make what the MPAA, RIAA, etc. want to ban, and they want to make it without restrictions. They're not perfect allies (few businesses are), but at least they have their nose to the wheel.
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What a bunch of symantical horseshit.
.mp3 files ripped from the same CD will almost always be a teeny bit different from each other. Not enough to be noticed, but enough to fail the bit-for-bit test.
Speaking of horseshit, did you mean semantical or symbolical?
Even a computer can't tell the difference between my CD and theirs, it is - bit for bit - identical.
So what? In a digital world all copies are bit-for-bit identical. It has nothing to do with copyright issues.
And, as a nitpick, two
You'd be better of explaining to us how this physical discrepancy is at all relevant.
Which physical discrepancy? We are talking about a legal discrepancy here. Your copy and their copy are legally different even though they are bit-for-bit identical. What's so hard to understand about this? My copy of, say, Baldur's Gate 2 and yours are identical, but they are legally different: I can play mine whenever I want and I cannot play yours without your permission. The whole concept of copyright is based on the idea that some copies are more equal than others.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
I think this is marvellous and I would hope it would apply globally. The problem is how do they determine ownership? I'd like get the mp3 versions of all those tapes I bought which have now started to warp/degrade. anyone got the mp3's for Carcass's Necroticism-Descanting The Insalubrious or Death's Individual Though Patterns? Nope, didn't think so..
Ok, so if I license a single, 30 second song to MP3.com, and then create 3000 bots to continuously stream it, each earning 1/3 of a cent each time, that adds up to $20/minute, or $28,800/day, or over $10 million/year... damn, sounds like a good business model to me... but not for mp3.com!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
... is to have all kinds of databases centrally registered by government agencies such as the NSA, CIA and FBI. You can bet that the first condition of this law is to have each and every user and piece of data registered with the appropriate agencies, for them to look at and construct profiles from.
And yet again, we'll be cheering them on because on the surface it looks like a win for the "fair use" doctrine. Wake up people! The government exists solely to increase its own powers, not to benefit its citizens. They'd love to be able to have every database in this country on file and available at the click of a button, and when they can play people and organisations against each other so that people want this to happen, they have won.
From here it's just a small step to identity cards, continuous surveillance and a police state controlled by the abuse of legislation designed to let government "protect" the rights of the people. This is America and we don't need to stand up for this blatent removal of our rights, we can fight back using our Second Amendment freedoms! We need to make the people aware of the dangers that KKKlinton and his cronies pose our freedom before it is too late and we're crushed under the boots of our "protectors".
----[%snip]----
To : jmoakley@mail.house.gov
Cc :
Attchmnt:
Subject : Music Owners Listening Rights Act of 2000
----- Message Text -----
Dear Honorable John Joseph Moakley,
I am writing to you in support of the proposed Music Owners Listening Rights Act of 2000.
You have have heard about MP3.com recently losing a lawsuit to the RIAA. The practice in question was MP3.com members scanning in their legally-purchased discs (to prove ownership) and MP3.com would then allow that particular member to listen to their songs wherevery they wish. I would like to emphasize that MP3.com required that you prove you owned the original. Unfortunately, MP3.com lost because MP3.com's copy is not the same physical copy as the customer's copy and is therefore illegal.
If this is difficult to fathom it is because it doesn't really make any sense.
The Music Owners Listening Rights Act of 2000 would allow a company to legally create a musical database:
""Simply stated, a consumer who lawfully owns a work of music, such as a CD, will be able to store it on the Internet and then downstream it for personal use at a time and place of his choosing," Boucher said in his floor statement introducing the new legislation." - Wired.com
I encourage you to support this bill and bring legislation up to speed with the technical capabilities of the internet.
Thank you,
Jason Desjardins
----[%snip]----
My .02,
My .02,
zencode
iactivist.org/jason
That the US government have to come up with a bill to prevent the reactionary tactics of the music industry, when they could have done it on their own and not given lawyers even more money. If you don't change with the times you get left behind, unfortunately, with a legal system that favours the rich and powerful they can delay that to a certain degree. Sooner or later though, there are going to be mass defections of artists to MP3 labels, and then where will they be? But (cynicism-mode on) the cycle will begin again when the MP3 labels start making money and can afford their own pet lawyers.
CDs need a Burst Cutting Area (BCA) number. This is something that can be burnt into DVDs at the moment (which I guess includes DVD-Audio). Every DVD can be given a unique BCA#. This approach would stop people lending their CDs to friends for the sole purpose of allowing them to register to hear it from an online DB. Of course, you would need a mechanism to unregister too in the event of selling the CD, or for the registration to be time-limited.
If the recording companies don't deserve money for promoting and selling recording than who does.?
The music studios don't deserve royalties in the my.mp3.com case. In case you didn't know Mp3.com debuted a free service called Beam-It at my.mp3.com. This service enabled people to play CDs from an online collection if they had previously proved that they own the CDs by having the CD in the CD-ROM drive and registering it.
Somehow the record labels felt that MP3.com owed them money for broadcasting music on the net without paying them licence fees similar to what Radio stations pay. This ignores the fact that all the people listening to the music already own the CDs being played. Of course all the members of the RIAA filed suit and MP3.com settled with most of them for about $20 million a piece except for Universal that pressed on with a lawsuit and won over $100 million.
The my.mp3.com will return but will be a pay service to offset the damage from the lawsuits. During Napster hearings certain Senators including Orrin Hatch realized that the RIAA was abusing copyright laws in an attempt to maintain a monopoly on legitimate means of digital distribution of music. The new laws that are pending indicate that Congress feels that the RIAA did not and does not deserve payment when people are accessing music they already own from an online site.
Second Law of Blissful Ignorance
I don't see anything specific on his website, but I recall reading elsewhere that Boucher was instrumental in the legislation that allowed the Internet to legally be used for non-research purposes. So he's at least partially responsible for the commercialized Internet of today, as opposed to the elite academic community of ten years ago. Whether that's a good thing or not is a matter of opinion, I guess.
where there's fish, there's cats
I bet that right now some RIAA people are accusing MP3.com of paying off a congressman to get this bill into the books.
--
I believe that is intended to be vague so it could be interpreted by the courts, probably purposely so.
As for how? Well, click-wrap licenses seem to work for software, so why not for a digital music locker...
Personally, I feel the technologically sound process that My.MP3.com used would be sufficient.
"...is to have all kinds of databases centrally registered by government agencies such as the NSA, CIA and FBI."
What the fuck are you smoking anyway?
If the NSA wants to know who I am, they're going to want more than my goddamned CD LIST! Do you think "Big Brother" cares if I listen to Metallica or Dr. Dre or Yanni or any other suckfest of a CD?
My advice to you is to go take all your little guns, and go into a cave somewhere in the Ozarks with all the other radical right-wing crackheads. Or you can lay off the crack and get your conspiracy theories out of your head.
It had to be said.
--
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The real Raunchola isn't cool enough to have any imposters
Could the sneaky members of club-RIAA have planned it so they'd destory MP3.com while it was illegal, then make it legal and make money on the exact same idea?
Multitrack recording:
- 70s- open-reel tape consoles, $50,000 (?) for 16-24 tracks 30 ips
- 90s- ditto at more like $20,000, first digital multitrack but _seriously_ inadequate $50,000 again.
- Now- 20-24 bit minimum, ADAT available in this class for under $3000, nonlinear DAW recording in a similar pricerange not counting the computer and disk costs. That's for something like Digi Pro Tools: ask the GIS crew about that.
Mixing- 70s- mixing console $10,000? Less tendency for hugeness and a zillion busses.
- 90s- mixing console $10-50,000. This is where huge consoles really took off- also, lower end consoles developed a terrible cheapness and noisiness, moving into the consumer zone. At this time digital consoles were useless even though they cost the earth- early digital consoles featured 16 bit busses and NO dithering. Any home PC can do better these days with the proper software.
- Now- analog consoles same as 90s unless you build your own and know your way around audiophile design- low end's a third as cheap as it used to be, but still very cheesy. Digital consoles becoming available with 24, 36 or even higher bit depths on the busses. DAW a mixed bag- you can do work with deep busses and good software for under $10,000, you can kluge the same thing for under $1000 if you know what you're doing, if you can build circuitry you can get in there with analog gear and match the fluidity but _not_ the noise floor (never underestimate the 'bit depth' of analog- no rounding errors at all, and dithering becomes unnecessary- dithering is actually a type of noise at about -110db!). More than ever it's WHAT you know not what you SPEND- demand is turning back towards high end audio characteristics, and industry standards are slipping. Which brings us to-
Mastering and Release- 70s- ouch! Good luck getting anywhere _near_ this stage. Disc mastering equipment in the millions of dollars, owned only by mastering houses- you simply could not play in this area, not even the recording studios did. There was never a consumer market for vinyl disc mastering.
- 90s- even more ouch! While older equipment would pass into the hands of semipros and rich amateurs for mere hundreds of thousands of dollars (perhaps less), while the Philips cassette became widely available, the top end continued to skyrocket, developing techniques like multiband compression to saturate the tonality of the music while suppressing unruly peaks. The first CD mastering equipment was staggeringly expensive as well. It was an era where there was a huge gap between 'bedroom recording and mastering' and the commercial stuff- you simply couldn't get anywhere near the commercial quality on cassette 4-tracks and 'mastering' to a dubbing cassette deck. For the first time you could do it all yourself, but the technology just wasn't there for other than hobbyist use or demos.
- Now- it gets _interesting_. People are used to assuming that you _must_ be able to spend millions to get state of the art sound- but, $200 CD-R burners? Free or shareware software that mixes and edits in 24 bit depths? You can get software for _free_ today, right now, that substantially beats what was the state of the art in the mid-90s. The technology is there- intensely there. Processes like multiband compression can be replicated in software... everything that used to take $50,000 mastering house equipment is becoming available in software. There's one major exception- monitoring- you _cannot_ do professional mastering work over Yamaha NS-10s, much less PC multimedia speakers or headphones. By the same token, amplification has to be terrific. And even HERE it's becoming accessible! If you aren't fussy, you could get one of the high-end multimedia systems- for instance, the Klipsch Promedia, which can handle substantial monitoring volumes without distorting- and that would be good enough to work with, at under $1000.
Summary Obviously, there's a need for more information out there- at this point it's not money that limits a home-recording musician (if you can get a few thousand dollars over the course of a few years you can assemble the required tools), it's information. You could say, 'get a 20-bit ADAT or a computer-based DAW with at least 24 bit mix busses and a CD burner' but that's like saying 'download EGCS, download the kernel sources- great, now write clustering software for i-openers over infrared ports!'. Mixing is as much a craft as an art and treating it like Jackson Pollock treated a canvas WILL result in dodgy mixes that are obviously not professional- and mastering has long been considered a black art, just as much as writing tricky device drivers! The information also tends to be hoarded, but with the Internet this breaks down a bit- for instance, I've read numerous rants by mastering engineers on how the major labels are getting into an arms race with compression and loudness, which is ruining the enjoyable quality of the sound (think later Britney Spears, and listen to the actual sounds being used- that's ruthlessly overcompressed).So the final answer would be somewhere between two and twenty thousand dollars for the equipment required to produce the high quality recording (some of which you may already have, like a computer and CD burner), BUT it will either cost you a couple years of determined study or another two to twenty thousand dollars to hire someone who can use that gear properly. It's quite like having precision parts machined with a large and powerful machine shop, routers and lathes and stuff- sure if you have the gear you _could_ do it, the question to ask is if you know what you're doing with machine tools. With studios it's 'do you know what you're doing with recording/mastering tools'. The tools themselves are more and more affordable, and even the information is becoming more accessible, but you have to be willing to learn- it's a discipline as demanding as programming, in its own way.
Does that answer the question? *creak of dead-from-boredom people falling over in a shower of dust* ;)
On a side note .. the digital locker wasnt an mp3.com idea.. they got beat by 6 months by myplay.
"I'm like an opening band for the sun" -Pearl Jam ; Yield ; Push Me , Pull Me
That's just like handing out condoms in high schools. It doesn't make the problem any better.
I think you may be confusing what's moral with what's theologically popular. Teenage sex isn't a problem. It's a reality. Disease and teen pregnancy are health problems, which condom use could go a long way towards solving.
So how does your analogy fit with what he said? I mean, unless you think both Napster and condoms keep kids from using the black tar heroin or smoking the crack or something. Then I guess you have a point. Sort of. Or not.
When was there honesty, again? I keep looking for it in theology and history books and I'm coming up empty...
-jpowers
-jpowers
You show me where in the judge's ruling he says any of the things you claim.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Having worked on the Hill over the summer, here's some advice for those of you planning on contacting your elected official:
a) Write them a snail-mail letter. There's a sneaking suspicion that one person is sending them all those form emails.
b) If you do want to write an email, include your NAME and ADDRESS. Without your NAME and ADDRESS, you might not be a constituent, they don't really waste the time to figure out the difference.
To contact your representative: Write-rep
To contact your senator: It's not as easy, go find their e-mail address.Your rights as a music buying consumer are at stake. If you think the recording industry has entirely too much power, tell Congress! If you think Hemos should be banned from the internet, tell Congress!
Most issues before congress are decided by members voting in the way they think will get them re-elected, without any input from the constituency. The saddest thing about this is how easy it is to let your views be known.
People all over the world participate in their own governments at levels we in the U.S. are privileged to but don't. Participation in the governing process is a privilege. Failure to use it could be failure to keep it.
If you think G.W. is the greatest thing since sliced bread, register to vote before October 8 and vote in November. Similarly, if you think G.W. is a cocaine snorting, S&L crashing, frat boy weasel, register and vote. If you don't vote you have no right to complain when the candidate you loathe most gets elected.
Code commentary is like sex.
If it's good, it's VERY good.
My office has been taken over by iPod people.
Otherwise they wouldn't need to write a law to allow it.
Imagine that you order a milkshake from an ice cream shop, and they make them two-at-once. One half of the batch is given to you, and the other half of the batch is kept behind the counter.
You can do whatever you want with your milkshake, but you can't touch the other one--even though they're the "exact same milkshake."
Of course, the "milkshake" here is bottomless, but the law is filled with this kind of grandfathered sillyness. Blame the world for changing, not the law for remaining just what we want it (slow to change.)
(And no, I'm not a lawyer. I'm also not a doctor, a politician, or a programmer. Of course, I might be a God...)
Hey, that's a good idea.
Selling it would be as easy as buying it--you just register "selling this CD", or even go to the database, bring up your entry, and delete that CD.
RIAA (or whoever) could even justify it as a way to gather consumer info... and the consumers benefit by being able to give feedback about the music they don't like, and that they do.
I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If you need legal advice, contact an attorney licensed in your juridiction.
:)
:)
Also, I've never heard an MP#, nor do I have an interest in having them streamed to me.
A quick note: the ban in the Constitution on "ex post facto" laws--those passed after the fact--only applies to criminal cases. If the law were passed quickly, and written to do so, it *could* apply to pending litigation.
Whether or not that would be a good idea in this case is left as an excercise for the reader
Have you even read the legislation? There is no mention of any sort of registration in the article (which of course must be a conspiracy by the government controlled media). Do you have any evidence of this at all, or are you just spouting conspiracy theories out of habit?
Why is it that someone posting totally unfounded paranoia is modded up as "insightful?" It looks to me like someone in Congress is finally getting a clue about technology issues (or at least this issue). We should be cheering them on, not inventing conspiracies where none exist.
b) No artist is REQUIRED to deal with the RIAA. They can't force you...
For that matter, nobody is REQUIRED to buy pasteurized, homogenized milk. But just try to buy any other kind. You can't.
Yes, an artist can try and distribute music on a minor label, or by him/her self. But by that path the artist is also guaranteed to remain small-time. If you want ANY chance at wide distribution or airplay, you MUST sign with an RIAA member.
There's even less choice than trying to buy a PC without Windows.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
What people seem to forget, is that MOST musicians don't do it for the money. It's the fame, prestige, and the simple fact, that someday, they could be opening for Ozzy, or Tori, or the Dumb Ass Back Street Boys.
Digital music is only going to take money out of the hands of those who depend on CD sales. If you go to MP3.com, how many musicians put their music online with NO remuneration? Someday, one of those musicians are going to be the next Metallica, or Ozzy, or Britney Spear (ick..)
The artists have to embrace it, or they are going to get left behind. I for one, am sick of paying an extra 5 dollars to get a fricking CD, when a CD is cheaper to manufacture than a tape. I'm through. I haven't bought a CD since my.mp3.com went to trial. Why subsidize an industry's lawyers, when I disagree with them 100%.
I used my.mp3.com with pleasure. the RIAA ruined that for me. I owned every CD I put up there, about 150 or so, some I don't really listen to anymore. Screw them, and screw their artists. I'll just make copies off the radio, MP3 em, and listen to em off of my webserver somewhere.
FUCK THE RIAA AND MPAA.
Grrr....
...if it passes.
FWIW, this is H,R. 5275, submitted 25-Sep-2000 it seems to the Committee on the Judiciary. (from the Congressional Record.
But why, one must ask, does it only cover music? The same logic theoretically should apply to all dual-media creative works, such as books (at least for methods that preserve exact formatting, like PDF and PS, in constrast to ASCII text), visual arts (paintings as JPEGs, and so forth), and likewise.
We may not have book-digitizing services now (to my knowledge, but I haven't been looking), but when PDAs or other devices are developed that ARE pleasing for books, or if good-enough laptops become common -- then there may be a potential market.
This seems overly... tailored, shall we say.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
I sense a DoS coming the way of Network Recovery Solutions (or whoever) in the near future. This kinda thing requires a lot of balls on the part of any company. Somehow I get the feeling they didn't think too hard about this possibility, but who knows.
Moo
I wonder if a digitally signed affidavit, if it were strongly linked to a verified, actual, physical, real-world identity, plus a Beam-It-style series of random spot checks on a CD would suffice to absolve them of liability.
Otherwise, it would seem to be an impossible problem.
A has a valid, legitimate CD bought from, say, Tower Records or a NRM.
B can, among a nearly infinite variety of possible actions,
1) buy the CD from A online, perhaps even pseudo-anonymously;
2) buy the CD in person, using cash rather than credit or something else that generates a trail,
3) buy the CD from A, who surreptiously burned a copy (which he kept and uses) and duplicated anything else that came with it
4) break into A's apartment and steal the CD and all associated materials,
In case 1, the only copy is legal, but it wasn't noted in any registry (of which I doubt any exists...). Electronic payment probably generated a trail, 'tho.
In case 2, ditto, minus trail but plus probable memories of faces.
In case 3, A and B *both* have copies, plus all the materials that may be needed to "authenticate" legal ownership. Thing is, at most one of them IS legal. So who's MPPP or its ilk going to trust?
In case 4, B now has everything required to authenticate and there are no other identical CDs running around to cause (in theory) serial number problems, yet it's an illegal copy. Unless A recorded all such unique IDs, reported them to police as stolen, and then this information is made available to MPPP or its ilk... Hm.
And we don't, say, have stores custom-burning CDs tied to one's retinal scan or other biometrics (which admittedly would make this verification problem a LOT easier, but cripple end-user sales).
So one hopes that "proof" would be interpreted a bit less rigorously than *absolute incontrovertible proof*.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Will work for bandwidth!
How much does it cost to use a studio and actually produce a high quality recording of work? I dont want some dodgy recording from a persons bedroom in the future.
-- Cheer, Cheer, The Red and the White.
1) This has been stated, I cannot stress this strongly enough - Send a letter, and send it by snail mail. You can thank a whole industry that used to specialize in spamming Congress by snail mail, and has now moved to e-mail, for this.
;) reflection. If this moves, it will likely move in Feb-March of next year - however, you letters now will make a difference in that move.
/. - it is extraordinarily irritating to see parinoid people attacking it - hell you just might have given the RIAA lobbyists an idea - go back the the Congressmens districts and tell their constituents that the congressmen supports tracking all of the music you listen to in a top secret database. The bill would die a quick and painful death.
2) Include your full home mailing address - you will only be logged ("Senator, we've gotten 1,200 letters this month encouraging you to support the MP3 bill") and receive a reply if they are sure you are a constituent.
3) This bill will not pass this session (which is supposed to end in a week, but will likely last a few weeks longer.) It just doesn't work that way - If Hatch or Wyden had introduced a Senate bill at the same time there might have been a chance, but it still would have been unlikely. The legislative process is meant to encourage sober
4) To all those who seem to think this is part of some NSA conspiracy, I think you may have left your aluminum foil hat at (the) home today
sorry, but this is a fairly well written first step toward the kind of public policy that has been advocated on
5) Laws are written in a generally vague way - open to courts interpretation - because if you write them very specifically, there will be loopholes - it is almost impossible when dealing with a human based system, to write iron rules. Human beings are flexible and creative - either way we will have court interpretation, be being vague we insure deference to "legislative intent" (in this case, to allow MP3.com and its' followers to keep doing what they do).
6)
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal...
How are they going to monitor my dcc transfers in chat rooms? Besides, there is an easy way around this problem. CHANGE THE EXTENSION NAMES BEFORE TRANSFERING to something like .txt or . 3PM ..... then when the end user receives the file they will change it back to mp3. Will this catch both mp3's and m2a's? how about .ram's?
Honestly this is a crock of #$%%#..... I'll believe it when I see it. Regardless. One could always go to a public lab, say at a university, and download files onto a zip disk and then take them home if the lab has zip drives. Honestly this has to be a crock.
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
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I support the legislation being proposed by Rich Boucher (D-Virginia) which is being cited as the "Music Owners' Listening Rights Act of 2000". You can find more information on it here:
http://www.house.gov/boucher/doc s/m olra-leg.htm
As a consumer, I feel that it is my right to listen to my music when, where and how I choose. Too often, large and powerful organizations (like the Recording Industry Association of America - RIAA) are able to pay lawyers and lobbyists to prevent consumers from making their own choices.
I paid for this music, and I feel that it is my right to listen to it how I choose. Many organizations lately are using the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) in ways that the Congress never intended. Individuals and companies are being sued and threatened for alleged "copyright infringement" under the DMCA by organizations like the RIAA and the MPAA.
Actually, what these organizations have forgotten is that the DMCA was written to protect consumers. And, in the long run it is in the interest of consumers (not corporations) to allow "space shifting" of music and other media. If you buy something once, you should be allowed to enjoy it for non-commercial purposes in any medium that you choose.
I believe that the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 and the 1984 Sony Betamax case protect the consumer by allowing them this right to make and share non-commercial copies of their music and movies.
Please support the legislation being proposed by Rich Boucher. And, also please support legislation that is in the interest of consumers regarding file-sharing and "space shifting". Recently this has been in the news a lot with the lawsuit between MP3.com and the RIAA and soon it will repeat itself as Napster and the RIAA resume their battle in court. As a citizen of the US, I support file-sharing and I believe it is my right to enjoy my music in any form or media that I choose.
Digital file-sharing is here to stay and it will only get stronger. Congress needs to create laws that help the public make sense of the legalities of copyrights in the Internet age. After the laws have been passed then the courts can enforce those laws. But, currently they have nothing to go by and the copyright issue in the digital age is being decided by lawyers and litigation with conflicting results. Please encourage the Congress to pass sensible legislation that is in the best interest of consumers while still protecting artists and authors.
Thank you for your time.
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Musicbank.com whole business model right now depends on this kind of legislation - because, lets face it - there's no way they could become profitable with the current record deals.
Myplay.com of course are the innovators on the whole online storage (beating mp3.com by 6 months). I guess that if this kind of legislation goes through this makes them even more legal in the eyes of the Music Industry.
Personally.... mp3.com can go the way pof the dodo for all I care - I've never liked them.
This sounds familiar. Like CD's from Microsoft and other vendors. I never could understand the purpose of this ID. If it's to stop pirating it doesn't work because all I have to do is give the ID to the next person. All this ID does it makes it a pain to enter every time and I usually mistype atleast one letter so then I have to either retype it again or search through the whole long ID just to find the wrong character. Warez actually makes this easier because all you have to do is copy and paste the ID in!
I just think the ID would be more of a hassel then it is worth but maybe I'm missing the point.
The same site MrP- links to has an article on the bill being introduced:
Music Owners' Listening Rights Act of 2000
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He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
Here's their page on their anti-MP3 service. Hopefully someone out there will send them some nasty emails and a lot of extra packets.
www.netrecoverysolutions.com/mp3.ht ml
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He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
I'll be honest here, this might sound like a good idea... Stoping the huge greedy record companies from exctracting money from the innocent little people. But there's always gonna be somebody who misuses it, finds a loophole and takes advantage.
Digital media-less music may be the way forward but thats not gonna be the case while the large record companies are still here.
I read an article recently that had a whole load of facts and figures showing where the £12.99 we spend on an album goes, I think the artist himself gets about £1.50 of it (don't quote me though). With roughly half going towards the record company.
For digital music to take off the artists would have to embrace it, I'm not saying they should give their music away for free... but they could certainly live off live performances and merchandise.
I'm bored now, and I reckon I've dished out enough bumpf for now.
Yes, finaly, the political system is getting caught up to the rest of the world.
Record companies have no right to tell thier customers how and when/why/where to use the music they purchased.
Once anything I paid for enters my house, its MINE
Just like the electricity I pay for, PGE doesnt say "your a mad scientist, dont use our electricity to make evil experiments", they just charge me more =)
If this bill passes it will be one step forward to getting the rest of the political system caught up int he digital world.
Next step, get the patenting office caught up as well and ban patents of frivelous things such as One Clock Shopping and shit like that.
Only one question, are there any websites set up that have forms, and send the form out to the state represetitive of our choosing? If not, who wants to help me set one up?
If you want to help me set up a form for theis MP3 Bill thatll have a premade, or variable form field that lets you choose what state your in, then send your plea to your corrosponding state representetive, mail me, brentj@servuhome.net
I think that would be a real effective way of getting people easier access to thier state officials, and will probably get a bigger show!
Just my 2 cents though.
Systems Administrator
Servu Networks
http://www.servuhome.net
Brent Jones
I want to thank the e-communities for inviting me here today to allow me to answer the charges that my lying reindeer vagina of an opponent has leveled against me. This slanderous individual has accused ME of having "shady" financial dealings with some businessmen from Finland.
While it's true that I sold a Fax machine to these gentlemen from Finland for a measly 5 thousand dollars, NEVER was their any mention of my supplying "nuclear secrets" as that reindeer vagina suggests.All of the photos you have seen are doctored fakes and this is all part of a vast conspiricy by the synergised e-business owners and the open-source advocates to undermine your faith in me.
Everything is but a number spoken by itself.
Quick, someone hack proftpd to report a /pub/mp3 which, when ls is executed it in, returns 2 billion files starting with a.mp3 and ending with zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.mp3.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
How does one transmit "proof" of "lawful possession," and what proof is sufficient? Clearly, proof of possession is understandable, but "lawful possession?"
I had to register my MP3 database with the Government! And now my FTP logs show 8000 hits a day in my Metallica directory from NSA.gov! An 10000 hits a day in my Live_Goat_Porn/Sounds directory from whitehouse.gov! The bastards!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
So in other words, this law will make it legal to download an mp3 file from a certified site or if I owned the album? I think that this is a cool idea and looks great on paper. At least they are not saying that the mp3 format must be banned because of copyright violation.
.mp3's to .3pm's before i transfer them , and have the receiver change em back.
However I don't think that this is going to satisfy record companies very much. Also, will I be able to download songs and pay by the song if I don't want to buy an entire cd? i.e. I like track 3 on the new 'band name here' cd.... But it isn't going to be released as a single. Everything else on the cd is total crap. Will I be able to download JUST THAT SONG?
Anyway, since this does not seem like it will do much in stopping napster I think the record companies would be more happy with this.
(By the way, how are they going to catalog the ENTIRE internet? and how are they going to monitor chat rooms dcc transfers??... Hmmmm... I think I will change all my
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
I can see then now where those damn lobbiest. This is one bill I need to see how its handled.
Isn't Slashdot international? Perhaps it would be nice once in a while if we saw people discussing the implications of such politics (as mentioned above) for all of us, rather than canvassing(sp?) for people to support this, that or the other bill in the US?
If a huge portion of the actricles on Slashdot link to Wired, why the hell don't we all just read Wired?
Last time I checked (60 seconds ago), Wired didn't have threaded discussions.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
I don't remember all of the details, but I have read that artists get little or no income from the promo CD's that these types of clubs offer on signing up (12 CD's for 1 cent, etc.) This is a key component to these clubs being able to make these offers, ie being able to shaft the artists.
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
How are they going to prove whether or not I own a cd? If I buy from blockbuster i may get a code printed on my recipt that lets me download the cd in mp3 format from blockbuster's website. However, If I buy from 'Mom and pop's record emporium' they might use a system that is not equiped. How do I prove ownership then? Does that void me from being able to download the mp3's? In addition, What If I buy a used cd or tape at a garage sale or at a cd trade center? do the rights to download transfer to me or are they voided?
Seems to me that this law is better for large national retailers and etailers and is bad for small town america businesses... Until I see how the 'proof of purchase' is provided I probably won't support the bill.
Now, a final way is to allow the user to download the mp3 if the cd is in the cdrom drive, and then the cd is read by a piece of software before the website allows you to download the file... Now I could loan the cd to my friend so they could download it (of course they could just burn themselves a copy). This might also open up the marketing floodgates. Someone would know EVERY MP3 you had..... Know your music tastes, etc... You'll start getting LOTS of targeted mailings.
Finally, I want to know how a site becomes a site that is allowed to transfer the mp3's. Who decides who has the authority to distribute mp3's and who doesn't?
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
Ok, it sounds great at first. MP3.com can still have its jukebox, and other companies can come forward with similar services.
But what happens in a few years when I want a similar service for my DVD's? When I'm travelling it'd be nice to have my whole DVD collection availiable to me on airplanes or at hotels.
Really, the law should have been aimed at any digital copy of a work you own. Artwork, music, movies, sculpture (captured in 3D of course), scents, software.
Perhaps that is too much for the government to handle for now. With any luck this bill will set a precedent enabling bills with more vision to come forth - I just hope I get to see it pass before I have a longing for My.DVD.com.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I know this would open a whole new can of worms, but....
what would happen if we had to register our music in a way similar to the way we're supposed to register our software?
If there were some easy way to register, such as an automatic registration with credit card purchases, maybe something like this could work.
But I suppose somebody would have to handle the owner database (Record labels perhaps).... and it would probably make it a pain in the ass to purchase/sell used music.
Other Companies did it before mp3.com.
I mean mp3.com even copied their catchphrase from myplay.com
Is Owned by Myplay.com
It more than suffices to prove that they have the possession, and it's unhackable (unless the client stores an entire copy of the CD, which makes the whole thing pointless anyway). But what werdna called attention to is that it doesn't just say "possession", it says "lawful possession". How do you know the CD wasn't borrowed from a friend, or stolen?
It's going to have to involve some sort of transmission of a sales receipt, (or a history of receipts and transfers in the case of a used CD). That's the only way anyone would be able to tell if the possession was lawful or not.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The Digital Media Association has been working on getting all sorts of laws changed for a long time - this is exactly the sort fo thing they would like to do so I wouldn't be surpised if ultimately this turned out th be their idea.
I see a few people suggestin ghte mp3.com hired some lobbyinst to get this bill, but somehow I think DiMA is more likely to be responsible.
And you know what?
mp3.com aren't a member of this digital media lobbying group, so they probably had nothing to do with it. I'm not sure if this is because mp3.com don't want to be a member of an association dedicated to the legal side of things... or whether DiMA just won't let a company like mp3.com join for fear of damaging it's reputation - note that their memebers (www.digimedia.org/members/index.cfm) don't include other controvesial companies like Napster.
So my guess is that they are probably the ones which may ultimately save mp3.com (ironic since the my.mp3.com concept was stolen from DiMA members....)
With backing from BMG and Universal and a deal with Virgin Megastores, Musicbank is set to debut sometime before the end of the year. Earlier in the year, Sony announced plans to unveil a streaming digital locker service."
So in reality, the major labels liked MP3.com's idea so much, they decided to run 'em out of business and copy their idea! Very Microsoftian, no?
If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
Hey, let's build a giant communication conduit! And then after we are rolling in a fancy, kick-ass economy, created by brilliant independent individuals, we can take credit for it. And then, all who have refined and CAPITALIZED on it can be hung out to dry. We can do this because the old-time money holders, special-interest groups and politicians on the take say we should. Golly that's a great idea. Can anyone say "Coup d'etat" ? Why not just barcode everyone, stick a CueCat in one hand and a PalmPilot in the other and get on with the Borgification of mankind. I can't wait to rule the world after the Politicrats and Technonazis get done illegalizing it. Rage Against My Machine!
"Normal is a cycle on a washing machine" -John P. McAfee