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Napster Users Being Arrested In Belgium
Coward Anonymous writes: "According to this AP bulletin in Salon, the Belgian police are arresting Napster users. This is a new twist on things, isn't it?
Now if only the Belgian police would be so effective at arresting pedophiles..." But don't worry, this only applies to people who have "been warned." How comforting.
So who gave you permission to use the word "PRINCIPLE"? Who invented that word? Who owns it? What makes you think you have a right to use it?
Intellectual property is an absurd idea. It's like a child planting a flag in the ground and claiming to own the earth. All these people protecting their precious intellectual property are ignoring the vastly greater FREE intellectual property without which they wouldn't even be alive.
Intellectual property is owned by a tiny aristocracy that has managed to delude many people into empathizing with them. You sound just like some obedient flunky on the eve of the French revolution condemning the disrespectful attitude of the sans-culottes.
However, as a whole, the RIAA's clearly heading in the wrong direction.
AC comments get piped to
interesting point; id like to note, however, that firstly, microsoft HAS done this (they stole the freebsd tcp/ip stack); secondly, in my ideal world, yes, microsoft could/would/should do that because their software (in my ideal world) would also be open source; thirdly, the GPL actually protects against such things in a world of intellectual property laws -- without taking advantage of those laws to quash freedom of source.
Ratio of replies to old sig content : replies to actual post content > 0.5. Sig changed.
Police gravitate towards low-risk, low-investment arrests. Given a choice between chasing violent, elusive, possibly armed criminals through a city and arresting harmless kids in their homes, they'll naturally choose the latter.
And cracking down on the mafia is hard.
Are you saying it's possible to vote only for politicians who haven't been funded by corporate interests? I didn't think there were enough such politicians to fill all the available places.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
Yeah, you got the CDs, you got the shirts, you got the mousepads, all you need now is the fucking talent ordered over the net, you'd have it made.
TINAT (This Is Not A Troll), I'm partly saying that to try to sound clever. But I'm also partly saying that because these people are not going to make their mint from selling 100,000 mousepads for 10 big ol' bands. They're going to sell 10 mousepads for 100,000 little bands. Hair metal wannabes, southern bar bands, MIDI ego trips, and stuff for honest local musicians to give out at the door in the hopes of getting 10 more people in the next time so they can keep on having the dumb dream.
Well let me save you the money, spudly. Don't order up a big load of those pro packages. You're going to lose money on it. Nobody cares how good your CD looks. Burn the things yourself; the local superstore has a spindle of CDRs. Buy a bulk of jewel cases and get Kinkos to cut the copies of the inserts to size. The people will love you for it. And everyone already has a mousepad. Instead, put up a web site with as many mp3s as you can manage to record. The more mixes the better.
If you're going to spend, spend it on the studio, but get someone who has a studio workstation, good microphones, and an ear, not some high-profile studio where you've heard of the owner.
And this whole rant wasn't directed at you, it was directed at all those other musicians. You've seen 'em too, I know, you can't miss 'em.
Music Freedom outlined the top earners for the year:
But we do need to remember that these artists only make up 0.1% of all the artists out there.
Matt
How dare you insinuate that Belgians are child molesters? That would be like me saying every American is a pot-bellied, poorly-educated ass-scratching subhuman.
Damn you and your close-minded Belgian hogwash.
I am an American. I can say, definitively, that beyond the shadow of a doubt ALL Americans ARE in fact pot-bellied, poorly-educated ass-scratching sub-humans. But, atleast we aren't Belgian!
We are all people.
Except for the Belgians! Hah! I use my double-standard to mock your views!
If there's one thing that computers and the Internet should have taught us, it's that we are all the same and we should love each other.
If there's one thing the "Internet" has taught us it's that all Belgians are kiddie-pr0n viewing, child-molesting, sons-of-bitches. But yes, we should all love eachother, except for the DAMNED DIRTY BELGIANS.
King Misanthrope
That's because for a lot of people, listening to new music is essential. I can't imagine going through life without music. I don't view new music as just another consumer product to try out, like a new flavour of Doritos or the current line of Nike trainers. Music is art (Britney Spears/Backstreet Boys crap excluded), it's an emormously important form of human expression, but unfortunately at the moment the legitimate/legal distribution channels for it are completely monopolised by a few greedy companies who treat it like it's just another disposable commodity. We now have the technology to distribute and reproduce music extremely cheaply and efficiently. However the music industry is trying to stifle this, at least until it works out the best way to make money from the technology. Of course artists should be compensated for their work. But first I think it's more important to undermine as much as possible the monopoly power of those fuckers in the RIAA, since they've been responsible for financially raping both musicians and music lovers for so many years. Clearly members of the RIAA don't have the best interests of either group at heart, so as far as I'm concerned they deserve everything they get.
very nice analogy. However I see the Music industry as 5 pieces of a broken up Microsoft. They all do the same thing, in the same manner just with differet Musical acts.
But really, All i want is to hear all the songs before I buy a CD so i can make a damn good judgement as to weither i think a CD is worth it's weight in dollars. :)
What we really need is a reconsideration of the whole concept of intellectual property laws
one word man, EXACTLY.
A Penny for my thoughts? Here's my two cents. I got ripped off!
So let me get this strait. After reading this article, and the replies, it seems that everyone here is FOR the people being arrested. But yet, you people are for DeCSS?
Actually I have every Metallica CD ever made. From Kill em all, to Load etc... Ive have already paid for the CDs, I have the right to download music produced by this band in a mp3 compressed audio format. You can't sit there and tell me you are for them being arrested, and then sit on your ass and do the same thing downloading 40 songs a day with a 10 gig hard drive dedicated to mp3s. Hell, most people on napster have a partition, or hard drive dedicated just to mp3s. Don't lie. Because from the repies I have read, it indicates that NONE of you use Napster.
Look to thine own eyes first.
If you mod me down just because my opinion is different from yours, then you can kiss my American, Rebel, Solaris using, mp3 downloading, opennap using, Xine+CSS DVD viewing ass.
M$ stock dropped in 1/2 since last year. If you are a MCSE, you will be broke.
What bothers me most about this is not the lack of accuracy in the headlines, but people like you are being held hostage and forced to read /.
Imagine how much happier you would be if you had the freedom not to have to read this site, and you were allowed to choose where you gathered your news.
I know at least you be free to do more reading, becuase you wouldn't be wasting time you could use reading other sites complaning about this one.
--knick
IMHO, Napster is just a P2P file sharing program. It is the responsibility of the users to ensure that copyright law is not being violated.
I guess this is the sort of headline that one has to write to get ones story noticed by the Slashdot cabal.
--
hahah, so quick to correct, yet: "There's no suck think as USia" wow, you americans are a funny bunch...
I don't know if I agree with this. I think having more than three teeth should be a criterion for being a person. Which would rule out most of Kansas, for example.
It's also very important to remember that musician careers are (under the current regime) about as longlasting as second-string star athletes. You have maybe two years. Period. The idea of a second album, or God forbid a lifelong career, no longer makes sense in the current industry.
This is why all forms of music underground are really starting to rev up. Good musicians _continue_ to do good work. If they can't do it through the biz, they will find other ways to do it, but they _will_ keep on doing it: it's like asking a programmer when he's going to outgrow hacking on software. You get a confused look, because that's something that doesn't stop being interesting.
Belgian ways
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
FORCE THE RIAA TO ACCEPT THIS TECHNOLOGY!
Geez, don't artists have some sort of 'union' which could make demands to the RIAA to finally TAKE ADVANTAGE of this technology!
MP3's have been around for about 3 years (give or take), yet in all that time the RIAA has done NOTHING but SUE SUE SUE! Instead, they could've put their efforts into providing MP3 related products of their own, instead of forcing other industries to subsidize them. Who wouldn't love to be able to purchase a disc full of MP3s of all their favorite artist's songs for about $20?
It's about time they realize this won't go away, and they need to adapt. Failing to do so will only be their demise.
"Resistance is futile" comes to mind
AC comments get piped to
Suppose i wanted to download a Crystal Method album. I'd fire up the Napster client (or whatever P2P client that i could use) and go ahead and search and download all the songs on said album. Now, I would NEVER pay for the album, never. So the record company(s) would never see my money in their hands for their product anyway becuase I would never buy it in the first place, so how is this considered stealing?
I tried poking holes in that by playing the opponient to that thought pattern. Here's an example:
Ok, if you think that, then i suppose going into a Wal-mart and taking a Crystal Meth CD off the rack and taking it without paying for it is not stealing either. But you didn't pay for that CD that you just stole, so you are stealing. It's the same difference.
(reverts back to defender of Napster/other forms of P2P music sharing)
Taking a a CD from Wal-Mart or any other store without paying IS stealing. It's stealing because Wal-Mart would have to cover the loss due to you taking the CD without paying for it. It hurts Wal-mart as a retailer.
However, Napster (et al) is different. It's different because the users on the system at one point in time paid for the Crystal Meth CD that I downloaded in mp3 form. One or more of those users had to pay for it, rip to mp3, and allow me to download it. They are willingly giving it to me. They don't expect a payment for my download. So unlike Wal-Mart, the users on Napster wouldn't consider it a loss. Their giving it away.
Again, how could I be "hurting the livelyhood" of Crystal Meth if I never intended to by their CD in the first place? They wouldn't recieve money from me for their CD, so i'm not hurting or stealing. Because stealing implies that I am taking their product away and their stuck with paying the distributior/record companies out of their own pocket. However, since I wouldn't buy the CD in the first place, their not losing money. Which would not hurt them (meaning losing money off of their works.)
(Reverts to Offense)
But your breaking the law!! Look on any CD, it'll say: "Warning: Unauthorized reproduction of this recording is prohibited by Federial law. And subject to criminal prosecution." or something to that effect.
(Defense)
But i'm not stealing am I. (Offense)
No? But your still breaking the law, and thiefs break the law too. And that's what your doing.
(Defense)
humm... (end of debate)
I couldn't think of a good defense for that, since i'm not fluient in Fair use laws
I'm not advocating Napster et al or a basher of them either. And personally when i download mp3s of of whatever online, If I like it enough to justify the 16-18 Dollars then I'll go and buy it. If I don't then i usually delete the songs and be done with it.
The point of this post, on/off topic as it may seem, was to hopefully get some intelligent responses to both offense/defense people so I, as well as any open minded person, can try to grasp what the hell is going on here. If your going to mod this down to non-existance for the sheer fact that is somewhat offtopic, be my guest. I'm expecting that. But i'm sure there are others out there who think along the lines i think about this as well. Also, I welcome intelligent respones to the reason why the above example is good or bad. :)
P.S. I love Crystal Meth, and went out and purchased their ONLY album (1997), i just used them as an example.
A Penny for my thoughts? Here's my two cents. I got ripped off!
Would you care to explain your reasoning as to why intellectual property is wrong? I contribute to open source projects. I also do not want my commercial work ripped off just because someone thinks that they have a right to it.
I might get modded down but fuck you, you don't know anything about the people in Kansas. Ever wonder why Lawrence Kansas was one of the test centers for cable modems 4 years ago? So to recap, FUCK YOU!
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
It had to be said...
In the Pricipia Discordia it is written that you should not believe anything you read.
Since the statement is all inclusive, I follow this advice constantly.
Everything is true. Nothing is real. All that you know is wrong.
fnord
They're doing something illegal, they've had a caution and they ignored it, now they've been arrested...where's the problem again?
Most artist don't make money in the record industry.
The smaller bands can get some income from live concerts and sell CD's out of the back of a van larger signed bands ususaly don't make anything off the sales of the CDs at all. Bands that hit the top 40 several times a year might get to the point where they are getting income from CD sales.
Music piracy isn't about ripping off musicians, thats the record companys job. Music priacy generaly helps smaller unknown bands because it gets their music to the ears of people who buy CDs.
The laws required to prosecute these people can take 18 months to be passed, yet these raids were carried out as early as last december! What gives, how come we only hear about this now?
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
Law in Belgium is not made by 'precedents' like in the US. In fact, I don't know of any other country in the world where court rulings make laws. Laws are usually proposed by governments, and then amended, rejected or approved by parliament, if I'm not mistaken. (I am not a lawyer)
The minister of justice has explained on the news yesterday that these little kids are not going to be prosecuted over this. They merely want to grab those who are offering those files for download. Prosection of the downloaders has gotten 'a low priority'.
And this doesn't happen in the US? Maybe a guy like Dutroux wouldn't have made it past the local news there, being just another run of the mill serial killer. Or would he have become a media celebrity, admired by many, like Geoffrey Dahmer or Charles Manson? Point your finger at your own belly button. Or aren't you American?
In fact, I didn't see any copyright notices on the mp3 files I downloaded. BTW, I never shared my files. What can they prosecute me for?
Wroot
On Belgian radio news I heard they traced people downloading music tracks. I cannot actually believe this. Using this method, they had to offer an mp3 share themselves and provocation is an illegal investigation method in Belgium (not like in the States, a cop can't provocate a crime). So, they probably downloaded themselves mp3's shared from those people, looked in their netstat to the IP-address connecting to, having success if it was an IP from a Belgium provided. ISP's in Belgium need to keep their Radius logs. So they actually know which user connected with which IP to the net on a given time. This info can be requested by police instances, not by that record company. So, that record company doesn't hold any names of users at home, the police does. The record company only holds a list of IP-addresses
yesterday (15th of february), Marc Verwilgen (minister of justice) claimed that the prosecution of Napster-users or 'illegal downloaders of music' would get the lowest priority. So, even if the IFPI or its Belgian branch WOULD prosecute a forementioned user, the case wouldn't even make it to a court and get seponated right away. However, as the whole legalisation of marihuana , the providers will be dealt with, and not the users. (so in the end, if were some lamo keeping your napster shut on the upstream and download everything you could get, you are safe. If you shared your own MP3's or your illegal collection, you will get burned as being of the second category: provider.
And people say the music biz is over-commercialized now...
As another poster mentioned, this merely turns musicians into marketeers.
Derek
Wroot
So you're ashamed at Slashdot. That's sad, because it probably means you'll be leaving our not-so-little and often-disfunctional community. And I know I'll be missing your posts. And we all know that Anonymous Coward has probably been the greatest contributor at Slashdot. So sad to see you go. We'll just have to figure out how to go on without Anonymous Coward.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Sounds like its time to go to Freenet.
Salocin.com
bah...
.belgian that has actually Gotten one of those warning emails, let me know...
If is use napster, it's to find music that for some reason, is hard to find on cd... So boohoo record companies, not only do you force us with a limited amount of music, you make us pay ridiculous prices for it...
Oh and BTW, if anyone knows a
mvg,
Kris "dJOEK" Vandecruys
Exercise caution when modding this message up: the author acts like a jerk when his karma is excellent.
Wrong. Music piracy does not help smaller bands because a. no one has heard of these smaller bands because they don't have a studio to spend lavish amounts of marketing money to get them played. b. the average Napster monkey doesn't download small band music - they download the big timers.
Music piracy IS about ripping off the musicians, because between the studios and the musician, it is the musician who is losing the greater amount proportional to the amount of CD sales they recieve. So what little a musician does make through the studio, you are taking away because of your short-sighted "slight" of "the man" at the studios. Way to be for the musician doood.
Derek
Wroot
This is only a media hype. I guess everybody wanna buy a paper with this headline ;)
Wroot
The Belgian police is just enforcing laws. If you eg. get a speeding ticket you hear the same whining... there are worse crimes then this one. On the Dutroux case... You guys have had more serial killers then anywhere else on the world. How many people did Ted Bundy murder? How long could he do that without getting noticed? As I recall he too escaped from the court by climbing through a window... And in the UK some doctor killed hundreds of women So please stop saying you're better then us Belgians. Go and look who put you on the moon (yep, NAZI germans like Von Braun did), obviously that was more important then ethics. Look who made your bombs possible (Einstein came from Europe) Look who 's teaching in your elite schools (yep, Europeans you bought away from our universities)
I guarantee that the subway stop distribution of free Backstreet Boys CDs is copyright infringement. You would be violating the right to make and distribute copies. While the noncommercial nature of copying is a factor that suggests fair use, it is only one factor.
If you don't believe me, look at what is happening to Napster. The only reason that Napster has committed copyright infringement is because its users are committing direct infringement (the court even said that it amounted to "commercial" infringement by the users because they would not buy the CDs).
Oh yes, Toni Braxton was SOO hurting:t ml
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/braxton1.h
Compare that 2-10% royalty figure to profit from sales of branded merchandise such as T-shirts, mugs, blah blah with projected sales figures per annum and then post back. Under which scheme would the artist profit most? What are reasonable figures for such sales without the marketing muscle of a studio behind a musician? Nil? Im not saying that artists deserve less, but they deserve more than the ZERO they get when you **steal** their music.
On that note, fairtunes looks like a way cool concept.
Derek
I live in Belgium..
Anyhow, I've done some hearin' 'round, and alot of people (including my mother) think it's normal that the police are arresting (or planning to arrest) Napster users..
Under-education is a danger.. Really..
AD
I am sick and tired of this bullsh*t!
Note to lawyers: Napster is nothing but a database of URLs and a nice GUI front end!
Send in the lawyers^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hclowns...
I would suggest a boycott, but soon there will be a Digital Media Profit Guarantee Act...
</rant>
Let's get drunk and delete production data!
I listen to bands because I like their music. I don't care about t-shirts, mugs, or other non-listenable things. I have enough CD jewel cases cluttering up my place already. All I want are the MP3s. I suspect there isn't a lot of money to be had in band memorabilia, or else the RIAA would be all over it.
Sure, buying songs for $1 wouldn't be that bad, but it would be more expensive than buying the CD (BTW, CDs cost $12-16 Canadian here--that's about $9-10 US). Considering the savings in manufacturing and distribution, $0.30 is more reasonable.
Of course, why would I pay money to the label when I could get the song free, and donate 100% of my cash directly to the artist (or just rip them off, if I was so inclined)? Music companies would still have to try to stamp out piracy. Things would be less broken, but they wouldn't be fixed. Maybe if the RIAA had gotten a cheap pay-per-MP3 service up two years ago, Napster wouldn't have gotten big, and this would still be possible. The cat's out of the bag now, though. Better luck next time, try again.
So far, only a small minority of artists have made money. Read their interviews. Watch VH1 behind the music. Learn to play an instrument, get in a band and go see it first hand.
Most musicians do not make much off their music. The vast majority have to do something else for a living. It's been that way for decades. Napster is not picking their pockets; musician's pockets were empty to start with.
The record companies are bagging the money. They are the ones making all the fuss while using this artist's intellectual property argument as a smokescreen. Don't confuse the record companies interests with the artists interests. They're not the same.
When it comes to ripping off the artists, Napster users just can't compete with the record companies.
Artists have fared no worse with Napster and the record companies have sold more CDs.
Napster won't help big name acts but it might help local bands. I doubt there is any way to significantly increase the income of musicians but I do fault the record companies for their disingenuous sanctimony. They gouge consumers, shaft artists and pocket the lion's share of the money. If anything Napster is more of a threat to them than it is to artists since most artists can't make much less than they are making now and many would benefit from the free distribution.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
I'm sorry, but I can't help feeling hurt here.
;-)
The previous person who was bitching about 'The belgians and their child-molestors' was Jorg Haider, because we (rightfully?) questioned the fascist government he is leading in Austria. At that time, the argument had also nothing to do with the real problem.
Anyway, for those who want to know, the Dutroux-affaire all came down to politics in the end (I hear there are a few of those cases in the USofA too). But Marc Verwilghen, the guy who tried to open up the politics connection then as far as he could (?), has also saved us now from the RIAA^H^H^H^HIFPI. (hey, is this a coincidence
I guess there are also some good guys here, phew.
Greetings,
A belgian pedophile
Yes, someone will say that stupid laws get passed because corporation X bought senator Y. Think about this: corporations don't vote--people do. If the public actually gave a shit, they would take a peek at campaign finance records (which are generally publically available) and figure out who was on the take. The problem is voter apathy
This is true to some extent, but you're forgetting that this government is run by money. Corporations have tons of it, and individuals don't. Hence the reason certain laws are slanted towards corporate protection as opposed to individual protection. [I especially liked it when Clinton pardoned that billionaire financier...he bought that pardon, plain and simple. But not everybody has billions of dollars to throw around.]
---
Check in...OK! Check out...OK!
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
However- what's wrong with 100,000 bands each selling 10 cds? That's my entire point- it establishes a market where one didn't exist before. Spudly with the big hair can sell 10 CDs, and there's nothing wrong with that. 'Bassic' (a very competent, likeable mp3.com musician) can sell thousands of CDs, and has- just through the natural sorting process. More importantly, it becomes possible to tread waaaaaay outside the mainstream and get away with it- I've sold (while I was at mp3.com) a DAM CD (meaning, nothing but 128K mp3s burned to CDR in a pretty package!) consisting of entirely raw NOISE music: you can hear the tracks at besonic, above, it's the 'Hard Vacuum' album. It was entirely done manipulating EQ and compression on raw shortwave radio interference and 'circuit bending' the compressor. I have never heard, or made, ANYTHING with less commercial potential, or less claim to be considered music. But I discovered there was a community out there which liked Noise, read some rants about what Real Noise was, and went for it- and that's one of the CDs that I _sold_ a copy, even without being able to offer a proper audio CD of it! I felt the experience was educational...
I hope I can wind up recording, mixing, mastering other musicians who don't have it together technically- that's what I'd like most to do. And you're absolutely right that people shouldn't be trying to get 1000 CDs pressed and then try to place them in stores- too many people get 'million cellars' (a million records in boxes in your cellar ;) ). But my whole point is, you don't have to do that anymore! Don't even burn the things yourself- set up with Ampcast, set up shirts etc. with CafePress, if they drop the ball then hook up with other services, but _decentralise_ it. Because it may be kind of unnatural to sell 5 million records- but what is wrong with selling 5, or 500? From where I'm sitting I could reach over and touch a modified Kurzweil Micropiano, a nice little synth module that I bought from an mp3.com royalty check. You can say that I don't have the fucking talent, if you want- maybe you're right, from some perspectives! But if I can pick up a few hundred dollars just from my music alone, I gotta wonder how well someone would do who _was_ really 'pop', without those nefarious Zappa influences that plague me and make my melodies dissonant :)
And it's not even about the idea that someone can be earning tens of thousands of dollars off their music- that's always going to happen for a few- the important thing is that I can get a couple hundred without any trouble, and that other people can get, say, $50 simply because, in all the world, there were some people out there who liked what they did.
To be accurate, currently I don't get a penny from my mp3s- I'd like to keep it that way but probably will switch over to ampcast completely on the basis of the CD program, and ampcast pays some sort of micropayment for downloads. They don't charge _listeners_ and if they did I'd find somewhere else to put mp3s. But my point is, I don't have to be the next Ricky Martin in order to earn a few bucks on my music. This is 2001- it's not all or nothing anymore. When I get rolling with the Ampcast CD program, I'll sell a couple to people who like the music- a couple to audiophiles or people who want to test stereos with it- here and there, it adds up, and doing order fulfilment is not MY problem. I get to focus on the music, and by doing so it will get better. What's not to like?
I agree with you. That woman from the RIAA talked about "old-fashioned" businesses. Well, if I did the equivalent with an old-fashioned method, such as sending illegal copies through the mail, they wouldn't go for the post office, but for me. As far as I'm concerned, Napster is a the modern equivalent of the post office and newspaper classifieds. Go for the people commiting the crimes, not those providing a service that is being abused.
I guess the joke is on me, because I've bought over 28 CD's in the past year alone simply because of Napster. I've never been one to buy a CD I've never heard before. $25 per CD is too much to risk walking out with one good song on a disk full of shit. So, despite what the media would have you believe, there are people who actually DO buy more CD's because they have the chance to listen to the music before they shell out their hard-earned cash.
"Next question, how many of you would ever buy a CD again if the record company had you arrested?"
Heh, let them try and find enough evidence to convict me. ;p~
First they laugh at you
then they mock you
then they respect you
then you win.
Haha, you`re so funny dude.. really... If you want to mock us belgians, try to find something clever instead of dissing on media advertised pedophiles who don`t mean shit. For instance you probably don`t know that Paris - Brussels is a 1 hour drive, which should tell you something about our cultural background. You probably never heard of Pragha Kahn doing the club-music in Basic Instinct. You probably don`t even know we once had the biggest uranium supply in the world, or that your french fries actually have a belgian origin, not a french one. Who first put foot on Nova Zembla, what was the hometown of medieval Emperor Charles V, maybe Rubens and Horta ring a bell, Waterloo is where exactly, and who the hell is Dirk Frimout anyway.. You probably don`t know anything about us belgians, and that`s probably for the best because frankly we like our cozy little country with its peculiarities. Some things are awfully wrong here, just as they are everywhere else.. so fuck your arrogant media consumed attitude.. I`m sure your beloved american president will be very good to america. Closed minded hogwash.. hah! Atleast we can still count, and eh.. we even use.. ehm.. yeah.. [evil word]computers[/evil word] for that..
Seriously the description _is_ a bit out of line. For instance we arrested Marc Dutroux and the whole string of people attached to it, along with a few other creeps and now this Morkhoven guy is due for court as well. I think it`s pretty weird that belgian court is all over everybody`s television. We`re a very proud (and that`s not the same as stupid or narrow minded) people and the sad story of a few kids being tortured to death in a cellar isn`t exactly something you want to be remembered by. Get it ? Compare it to VietNam or Hiroshima if you like. It`s not funny, and I hope slashdot was mature enough to refrain from box-thinking.
Made in belgium, and proud of it.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
Gee, thank God CD-Rs sold will soon put money into the pockets of commercial music. You gave me quite a scare flaunting off your businessmodel like that. Almost had me convinced of the demise of commercialism in music. :-(
Music not made for money is not _worth_ listening to.
- Steeltoe (in a sarcastic mood)
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Arrests of Linux users?
nobody is arrested (yet), only their houses were searched
So what, would you like them to search your house?
Read the COurtney Love piece or the Steve Albini piece. That is NOT take home pay. Out of the artist's share comes all the costs of recording the record and all the promotional copies that get sent out to the radio stations and a million other niggling, petty deductions including (I am not making this up) a deduction for "shellec breakage". Yes, a percentage for 78 RPM releases breaking in shipment.
The RIAA member companies employ the same creative accounting techniques that the MPAA member companies do, where a film can cost $100 million to make, sell $200 million in tickets and "not make a profit".
The best thing that can happen to artists is the demise of the "music industry".
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
If you have done your research well you'll know that criminals are born criminals to.
Vote for the Green Party next time... They dont take corporate funding...
"Now if only the Belgian police would be so effective at arresting pedophiles..."
There is a difference between normal pedophiles and pedosexual rapists/murderers, you know. People don't choose to be pedophiles, they're born that way. Do you really think anyone different (Jews, gays, pedophiles, ...) should be arrested?
Norbert de Jonge
http://norbertdejonge.sourceforge.net
http://Ggradebook.sourceforge.net
Have anyone noticed that the tech economy started going down after all those lawsuits?
Yes lawsuits are killing the economy.
Caveat: I don't think it's right to enforce copyright laws AND impose a blank-media tax. That's screwing consumers, left, right, and center. You should only be screwed once :-)
This also shows hypocrisy on the part of the record companies. It's okay for them to take an arbitrary amount of money (read: steal) from us, but it's not okay for us to "steal" from them by downloading pirated MP3s? Please, one or the other, but not both.
---
Check in...OK! Check out...OK!
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
hmm... let me see here... both have the same journalistic integrity.
both don't give a fuck what they print/post
both suck ass...
coincidence??? I think not.
News for turds, shit that splatters
200 years from now, future generations will look at our history. We have the choice of being the generation who gave up and left the revolution unfinished OR we can be those who stood up for themselves and for their rights.
In 200 years we'll either be looked at as cowards OR looked at in admiration. We have the opportunity to be the generation who brought back freedom to society.
So who do you want to be today?
In a prior article a Micro$oft exec was complaining about the whole concept of Open Source. Now do we really expect the Music Moguls to be especially principled when it comes to respecting the rights of the Open Source community? Would the music execs really put up with a free music site _even if every piece on it was performed by musicians who had GPL'd their music?
> And here I thought only private corporations had that kind of power...
You were right. The IFPI provided the names of 100 'legally interesting' users to the police (the raids were NOT the result of police effort).
What's more, the IFPI has/will have a system in place that instantly gives them the IP numbers of everyone logged in to Napster servers (both the official and OpenNap ones). Although they can't see WHAT those people are doing there (they could just be chatting), they will then turn those IP numbers over to the police.
When all other methods of communication fail, try words.
Some houses of people, operating an illegal MP3 site were raided - no arrests as of yet.
IFPI (the Belgian RIAA) has been busy the last couple of months collecting data on Belgian Napster Users. They've send out a warning to everone who was identified to scare them away from Napster. If these "warned" users appeared multiple times on their lists later on, they were added to their blacklist - which IFPI gave to the authorities. IFPI has stated multiple times that they are declaring war on the individual napster user.
Coincidental, the people who were raided, had also napster installed. IFPI added them directly to their blacklist.
Yesterday, the justice minister in Belgium - Marc Verwhilgen - sent out a press release that litigating napster users has absolutely the lowest priority in our courts. This is basically the same as: "This napster-thing is really just bollocks, we have better things to do". In reality being "low priority" in the Belgian courts means that there won't be a trial for an individual napster user unless hell freezes over.
This means that individual users on the IFPI-blacklist won't be prosecuted by the Belgian authorities for using napster. If you were using napster to burn thousands of illegal CDs and sell them, you've got a whole different situation. In that case you will be prosecuted for the selling of illegal copyrighted material - not for using napster.
Not so dumb here in little ol' Belgium, eh? ;-)
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
You could always hire Executive Outcomes.
Wrongo. This is from the Fairtunes' FAQ on how much artists make from CDs:
According to the book, This Business of Music $0.447/CD.
According to Courtney Love, Toni Braxton declared bankruptcy in 1998. She sold $188 million worth of CDs, but she was broke because of a terrible recording contract that paid her less than 35 cents per album.
According to Matt Johnson of TheThe, $1 for every CD sold.
From personally speaking with artists it really is about $0.50.
And remember artists only see this money after they've repaid their advance and all the costs that went into producing and marketing the CD.
If I'm going to shell out $12.99 I want *ALL* of it going to the artist and that is why I compensate through Fairtunes as opposed to through the RIAA cartel.
Matt
It's only illegal in the US if it's over $500 worth per year.
Otherwise you're ok legally.
The retail store analogy is flawed. If you steal a Emenem CD from some old defenseless lady it's stealing and you can be charged for that. But if she burns a copy and gives it to you it's no big deal. Unless she does it too often...
The Common Law of England and the governments that evolved from British colonialism is mostly based on precedent.
That would therefore include the UK, the US, Canada, Australia and probably several other nations at least where the courts make up a fair body of law as they go along.
Of course, as much of the Common Law was not favourable to governments, they don't much teach us about that heritage anymore.
dude, awesome post :)
"We apologize for the inconvenience."
1. Promote quality, discourage crap.
sulli
RTFJ.
Good lord! Where are we going to jail 10 million people for the next 15 years?
Even if we had the space, you have any idea how much that's going to cost?
Can you say 'Instant tax increase?'
That's why laws are adjusted when enough people want them changed. All this needs is those 10 million people to actually DO somthing.
Later,
ErikZ
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
heh .. you got a point here ..
... kinda pathetic.
I'm actually belgian, and so far as I can tell, every country out here has pedophily problems. Must we Belgians keep getting blamed and laughed at for having actually done something about our pedophily cases and disclosed the whole thing ?
guess we just have to add 'child porn' under 'beer' and 'fries' in our stereotypes list
How dare you insinuate that Belgians are child molesters? That would be like me saying every American is a pot-bellied, poorly-educated ass-scratching subhuman.
We are all people.
If there's one thing that computers and the Internet should have taught us, it's that we are all the same and we should love each other.
Please, Slashdot, I urge you to change the story description.
-- Jann Flugelhof
What they did was log a bunch of IP addresses, then have the ISP's mail their clients with a form-email telling them to stop.
;) Nobody mentioned any of the alternative file-sharers, though. Apparently, the group of people who will be raided by the police now is the first batch of 100 out of 12,000 they have logged.
:)).
There have been several cases in Belgium where the ISP's have been held accountable for content published by their members if they couldn't show they actively discouraged and punished such content, so they really have little choice in the matter.
By their own accounts, the IFPI (RIAA counterpart) now has a search in place which can keep track of/log the entirety of Napster-using Belgium. They sounded quite smug about it, even
Anyway, if it is any comfort to anyone, the justice minister has already announced these sorts of prosecutions will get the lowest priority in the courts (even less than cannabis!
-G --Veritas Prevalibit
--Fac Iustum Nec Time-- --Veritas Prevalibit--
turns out that my misconception stems from the case of an MIT student who was running a server that served up copywritten material. from http://www.silverglategood.com/cases/lamacchia:
"LaMacchia was charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He was not charged with criminal copyright infringement because, as of that time, the latter offense required proof that the infringer acted for financial gain. To do what LaMacchia did without financial gain was not, in fact, a criminal violation of federal copyright laws as they then existed. There was no evidence that LaMacchia had sought or obtained any financial gain from his actions."
i'm told this event - and congress' ultimate reaction to it (DMCA) - are what is currently causing napster fits. much apologies, i am a bonehead. =)
My .02,
My .02,
zencode
iactivist.org/jason
You know, the link up above is a really worthwhile (and eye-popping) read on the sad state of affairs that is a major label recording contract, written by one of the big engineer/producers of the 90's, Steve Albini.
I highly recommend that you read it.
-The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)
-The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)
=(.\')=
but its actually legal and though it may seem severe, its less.. controversial than many of the things done in other countries (carnivore, anyone?). dont get me wong, i oppose intellectual property laws almost across the board, but as far as following the laws that exist, this seems to be pretty much ok. note to self: stay the hell away from belgium.
Ratio of replies to old sig content : replies to actual post content > 0.5. Sig changed.
-----
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
no, you don't have to do it all yourself. They don't make their own guitars, now do they? But if you wish to become a professional, you'd best find a way to make money. Selling stuff works great, especially CDs. Yes, you would probably have to find someone with a bit of experience in marketing to help, but that's what bands do with major labels anyway, they just get it all in one package for only the cost of their rights. Now, they can do most of it on their own, and use those nifty world wide distribtution networks to get the word out, marketing wise, about their music. With those, anyone who hears about the band can listen to it.
And since I've talk to you about this before, I'll continue.
These suggestions completely fail to address questions about how musicians can earn a living.
Completely fail, eh? Well, you might go back and read the most common suggestion. Being a musician is easy, being a good musician is not, making money as either kind is tough, mainly because being one is so easy. I think that addressed the most important part of the equation.
BTW, I think pandering to freeloaders is a remarkably stupid business plan -- and most of the people who propose alternatives to copyright are freeloaders.
O.k. this whole freeloaders thing has gone on long enough. Anyone who thinks Napster was free, even in a monetary sense, is fooling themselves. Computers cost money, bandwidth costs money, ripping music takes time, time usually costs money. All of these things are taken care of by "freeloaders" who spend at least $20 mo (I spend $100) for bandwidth, and $1000s for their individual nodes. It is a very expensive network, but one where 99% of resources come from the users.
Building a business on the backs of these people in an ingenious business plan. It just that currently its legality is in question. Because of the above criteria, I don't see freeloading as a big problem. Sure, you get a bunch of idiots not realizing how much they are spending to be "free", but that doesn't change the bottom line (which isn't at 0).
And I don't think most capital punishment opponents are murderers, although some probably are.
--
+&x
Now, I know it takes a lawyer (or 10 kegs of beer) to correctly blur the statements into the correct interpretations, but it looks like what people around here might be interested in is the correct definition of a simple infringment. Also, although I would like to agree that the $1000 was in relation to FINANCIAL GAIN, when I read that site, all I saw was "RETAIL VALUE" of $1000. Which you know the RIAA would definately charge up to $19 per CD....even though a person only has an Mp3 copy of it, and wasn't selling it.
Can the lawyers blur the meaning of "financial gain" even if people are giving the mp3's away? --I'm not exactly talking about what the case from slashdot's article, but in general with people trading large amounts of mp3's....
Rader
If the music industry thinks that people are violating their copyrights, then I really think they should go after those people. Napster just stores file names and lets people search. They aren't the ones who are copying files. Granted, Napster hasn't done much to police their site and may be partially responsible, but they don't get the full blame.
SPF support for most open source mail servers can be found at libspf2.
The record industry is chasing heavy Napster users, especially those who illegally make copyrighted material available. The record industry turning in 100 of these to justice in Belgium. The secretary of justice has replied by saying that legal action against users has the lowest priority. So in my opinion the record industry is just making a marketing campaign and warning the public against illegal use.
There is too much hype over Napster. People need to get a life. Download MP3's from one of the dozens of other places.
samrolken
While, as stated in many replies, this was not directly related to Napster, I would like to point this detail.
The IFPI spokeman clearly stated that they were using some sort of "scanning" device (coud very well be a couple of Naspter clients logging what's goign on), which seems true.
I live in Belgium and a couple of my friends got emails from IFPI lawyers regarding their use of Napster.
So who knows what's next, considering the IFPI is probably keeping a list of IP's used by Napster users.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
I'm getting real tired of Slashdot's half assed excuse for journalism. I mean, how hard can it be to write a headline? They don't even have to write the damn article, just the headline and blurb, and they can't even do that right!
Here they say that Napster users are being arrested when they are not. Just earlier they said that Jim Allchin wanted to outlaw Open Source, when he clearly said no such thing. A quick search of previous article will reveal other such deliberate misinformations. And it can only be deliberate, since even a cursory reading of the linked articles reveals the truth.
Never believe anything you read on Slashdot. They make the Weekly World News look like quality journalism in comparison, and even ABC doesn't look that bad next to Andover.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I have several friends that are in bands, Good bands. and My 16 year old son knows one that was recently signed by a record company. here's what happened....
their lawyer looked over the contract and stated that it was a standard record company contract (he compared it to other contracts from that company.) so it's not some special screw em contract.
They lost all rights to all their music. they own nothing now. The lead singer recorded an acoustical version of a song he wrote years ago and posted it on napster/gnutella the company found out and fined him $2500.00 and told him that he was responsible for getting it off of there. when you sign a record contract you sell your soul completely. The company own's you for the duration of the contract... Let's look at that closer. The lead singer of this band, wanted to take a vacation and visit his parents, the record company said NO, they will tell him when he can do something. He cannot appear on TV or call into a radio station without prior approval of the company, and any money he recieves for his skills must be reported to the company for their cut. (don't play in a bar on the side.... they get a cut of that!)
the record companies screw the artist hard. and I have yet to meet a real artist that didn't like napster. (metallica don't count they are NOT artists.)
This whole music thing is a simple gambit. The overlords are looking to quell the peons. and if the peons don't comply, opress them.
There is not one thing that a record company can give a band that the band cant get on their own (except airplay, as radio stations can only play music sanctioned by the group owned by them. (I know this... I worked in radio))
I support any artist. I do not support the leaches that steal from the artist (record companies)
Unfortunately, the leeches will win, as they can outspend every one of us.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
As noted by other posters, nobody is arrested (yet), only their houses were searched. The action was taken because of a complaint by the federation of record companies (roughly the equivalent of the RIAA).
The justice department has issued an official reply to this, stating that persecution of people who download music (as opposed to the ones who actually supply it) has the lowest priority. We'll only have to wait and see what the interpretation of lowest priority will be.
WWTTD?
well, a clarification is due....America does not "allow" kids to carry guns..never has. The "kids" in Littleton obtained their guns illegally and no matter what laws there were, they still would of got the guns eventually.
if some deranged kid in Belgian wants to shoot up his classmates, he will get a gun if he really wants to. No matter how banned or controlled guns are...
I do admit one thing..we lock up enough people for "casual" drug use, mostly people who cannot afford a good lawyer (ruining their lives in the process...)... Do you or anybody really think any country is going to lock up people for copyright "personal" copyright infringement? especially when most infringers are under age 20? Hell no....well, at least one would hope not.
My question here is, what constituded "being warned" in these cases? Was it an email? A form letter? A phone call someone never got? It smacks of overkill for the crime, kind of like Operation Sundevil.
The hooligans are loose! The hooligans are loose! What if they become ruffians? -- Bill Hicks
I think most informed people do - most people on /. would vote against people that are so easily influenced by special interest groups.
/. - its a problem for the general Joe Schmoe who works at X corporation. The general public does not give a sh*% about what the people on /. think and therefor do not consider those issues when they vote. For instance take the last election, it is full of examples of where people do not care one bit about politics (some lady on NPR voted for Bush - because he looked nicer...)
/. worthy]
Voter apathy is not the problem on
You have to remember that out of all the people in the world - people whose lives are seriously affected by such laws enough to care about the issues is a small number. i.e. - there are many CS/Technology related majors at the U of M. About 1/2 think the teachers are dumb and believe they know best - these people talk alot but do nothing when it comes to elections. About 1/4 simply haven't learned enough yet to make decisions. And the last 1/4 cares and votes there minds... Most people not in technology related majors don't give a damn at all. (Because the laws have little or no effect on them)
Voter apathy... I dunno, people have and always will care about only that which affects them directly and in an important mannner - Voter apathy is IMO when something affects a person directly but they just don't care. Remember, You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink it.
This problem of Dumb laws has occured thoughout history and has always corrected itself - i.e. Once upon a time child labor in sweatshops [1900's] was a great thing, now its just the opposite. As more people start to use linux, more people will become informed until the law affects the general public - I say linux because of all the issues surrounding it [open source, DeCSS, GPL'd stuff and whatnot], whereas any idiot can claim to be a napster advocate and not know jack about the issues...
So what to do? [Shameless Linux Plug] - Encourage people to try new things - like linux, they will ask questions eventually on thier own and get involved and informed... until then - we wait...
[BTW - Change the story description - its not
There is always a frontier where there is an open and willing mind
This just strikes me as Charles Manson telling a bunch of kids to go out and kill their families and giving them the instructions and weapons to do it. Then, after they commit the murders, arresting them and giving Manson a contract with the FBI (aka, napster signing up with BMG, etc).
I don't really care much for either side -- but it does strike me as incredibly ironic and unjust.
---
seumas.com
Actually, I think it would make a lot of sense to formally define stealing as 'taking something away from someone so they don't have it anymore'.
You are indeed correct. We need a better term. How about trespass? These individuals are trespassing upon the intellectual property of the artists and distributors.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
BTW, I think pandering to freeloaders is a remarkably stupid business plan -- and most of the people who propose alternatives to copyright are freeloaders.
And how could this thread have gone on this long without mention of those MISERABLE FAT BELGIUM BASTARDS?
--
There is no sin except stupidity -- Oscar Wilde
I read on another forum somwhere that Belgium has just relaxed laws concerning the recreational use of marijiuana, and that a few cafes are opening that offer similar services as you might find in Amsterdam. I don't give a rat's ass about recreational marijuana use, good for Belgium... But really? Priorities? "Use an MP3...Go To Jail!" How very hardline of you... But feel free to get zooted if you like... Non net-centric businesses are clueless about technology and it's effect on popular culture, but you have to admit that government is just down right out of the loop. If big business is the newbie, government is about as qualified as a nightclub men's room attendant. It like the old class exercise of passing along a bit of information from classmate to classmate; once the message gets to the last recipient it's sure to be mangled. Big business gets the story wrong to begin with, then passes it along to the goverment who has it's own twisted take on the whole matter. Yikes... So smoke 'em if you got 'em, but that Jimmy Cliff better be on a 100% non biodegradable 17.95 dollar compact disc!
It's not fair, it stinks, but that's the reality today. Someday it may be better, but if you're a hot local band looking to move to the big time you'd better sign when you can. All you can do is keep the contract as short as possible so that you can sign a better one the second time around.
I heard a few weeks ago an interview of Olivier Maeterlinck from IFPI, the organization of music producers (you know, those who make money with the music of other people).
Here in Belgium, they pay a guy to use napster and search copyrighted music. When he finds a track on a machine connected through a belgian ISP, he phones the ISP, gives the IP and asks the street adress. At the time of the interview, most ISP were cooperating but at least one refused, arguing that IFPI was not the police or a judicial authority.
So the IFPI people are really acting like a parallel police, using the money they earn from selling music to protect their business.
About the stupid comment on the story (Now if only the Belgian police would be so effective at arresting pedophiles..."), you should have said :
Now if the Belgian IFPI people would be so effective at tracking pedophiles ...
"Life is all about priorities"Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
Hee, hee. I didn't even read Slashdot last week :-)
I posted this because checking out the replies to their headlines, it seems as if there are an awful lot of people who never read the link, and see the headline as the gospel truth. It almost makes you wonder if they think the WWF is real.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
This shows that some govenments are really serious about cracking down on sharing of pirated music, but they will never be able to stop it all. Somebody will always be out there cooking up the next way to share music. If anything, this will just make people try harder to make better programs
C:\
C:\Dos
C:\dos\run
Sigs are against my religion
So does this mean I can ignore the GPL because Richard Stallman does not have any property in his own works?
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Neither did we.
$ finger #timmy
$ finger #timmy
invalid use of finger
If people were to stop buying CD's at such a high price, the record companies would learn that they can't rape the public. But, the average person continues to bend over, and take it.
Although this gives us a choice of paying the maximum we are willing to pay, or going without entirely. Most industries have enough competition to prevent them from setting the price too high. If I don't like the price, I find a cheaper alternative.
This isn't the case with music. If I want a CD, I will not settle for a CD by a different artist that might be cheaper.
Well, the RIAA did it again. They flew their goons over to Belgium and arrested these users, all without triggering off an international incident. What? It wasn't a group of RIAA security guards? It was the Belgium police instead? Damn, I was getting all worked up to yell at a private corporation and now you tell me it was the government yet again. And here I thought only private corporations had that kind of power...
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I just wanted to point out something about what you people call "fair use". Granted that the discussion of "fair use" is minimal in this particular thread, it has cropped up frequently in the past, and it is evident that a lesson in "fair use" is necessary.
Fair use is NOT an invitation to copy. There was a post about distributing Backstreet Boys (*shudder*) CD's, that had been copied, in a subway, and how it supposedly constituted "fair use". Perhaps in your mystical magical happy-land "fair use" means what we, here in reality, call "illegal copyright infringement".
Fair use means use of an author's work, without expressed permission, for the purposes of critique. If Rush Limbaugh says something totally outrageous and I decide that I want to write something about it on my website, I can transcribe, verbatim, what he said, and then write my reaction. Oviously I do not own the copyright, the radio network does, but I am immune from legal action because that is considered fair use.
Have you ever seen a movie trailer that contains critic's reactions to the movie? Do you honestly believe the critic was paid royalties for the use of his 3 word quote? Of course not! It's fair use. Even the critic's use of the copyrighted movie title as well as clips from the film is fair use. The critic doesn't own the rights to the film, nor does the production company own the rights to the critic's opinion, but they each use each other's material.
So for those who were a bit... "confused", this really and truly is the extent of what is considered "fair use", as far as replication is concerned. There are, of course, other types of "fair use" (broadcasting music and such), but this is really the only one that seems to apply. I hope this clears up some of the "confusion" surrounding the subject.
In today's Washington Post - click here - there's a story about how US Senator Orrin Hatch, among others, are contemplating taking action *against* the record labels to strip them of some copyright privileges. Apparently Hatch is miffed that the recording industry has done next to nothing to adapt to the Internet... worth a look.
Also see Orrin Hatch's page for Hatch's complete statement on Napster.
- idiolect
The overpowering weight of your affection has caused me to drink myself into oblivion.
At least they aren't arresting people for distributing linux source code and "destroying intellectual property" - like Microsoft would like to have done here.
--
Twivel
Microsoft Humor
idunno, you might want to check out what *really* happens before you start pissing on Belgians... IFPI Belgium has filed charges (sorry, dunno whether that's the correct term, i'm a stupid begian you know) against some 100 known Napster users, and as such, the police HAS to take action, after all in fact those Napster users are violating copyrights. The belgian police don't have a choice. But here's the nice part: our Minister (Secretary?) of Justice, Marc Verwilghen, known for actually trying to solve the dutroux case, has declared that the Napster users won't be sued, just because there are worse things than using Napster to download a song. so if u wanna piss on something, piss on the belgian music industry... Oh BTW: belgian police let 1 child molester have his way, America allows children to carry guns and kill their classmates (Littleton remember?) ... so are you pot-bellied americans REALLY that much better? at least we didn't elect a semi-Nazi president!
Buffer overflow
And not all pedophiles are murderers -- or child molesters for that matter.
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
King's failure was due to bad implementation.
$ finger #timmy
$ finger #timmy
invalid use of finger
As a belgian, I can confirm that it's NOT TRUE (it was on the news here yesterday). The story is that the music industry has filed complaints, but the minister of justice said it would have the lowest priority there is (meaning no prosecution). At least someone is behaving in a rational way.
That's why you should support minor labels like Epitaph and Fat Wreck Chords that don't rip off their bands. These labels also publish actual *good* music, unlike the major labels.
-- Somebody call for an exterminator? - Terran Ghost, Starcraft
Just sign up with a minor label, like Epitaph, Fat Wreck Chords or Burning Heart. You won't get as much publicity, but you won't get screwed either.
-- Somebody call for an exterminator? - Terran Ghost, Starcraft
Thank you. As a (strictly amateur, but who cares about that :) musician, I agree 100%. (And have been happy to read some of your rants on the subject in the past as well.)
:)
Thanks for spending the time yelling and hollering to get these points across, because it saves me (and probably many others) the time to do exactly the same, and does a much better job of it than I could do myself. (My semi-factual incoherency in response to WinXP audio stuff could be found on LT yesterday, if you wanted to see concrete proof of that fact.
Please keep it up... and I'm going to check out your stuff... and probably buy something if I find anything to my taste, simply because I appreciate the effort. I believe you're speaking for a lot of us here, or just me at the very least.
And the CD burning on demand... wow. That is cool as hell. You're pointing out all kinds of things I hadn't heard of. Is there a good site for keeping up on these sorts of developments?
With this administration, and the FUD of microsoft, expect more of this and attacks on free software. Information Wants to be Free. Dumbya and those in power here could be arresting napster users soon.
Republicans are Nazis. LetsRiot!
How about "infringing copyright?" Worked up until now. Or do you mean you need a new inflammatory, inaccurate, get-the-average-TV-watching-idiot-to-think-it's-as -evil-as-Hitler term?
--
There is no sin except stupidity -- Oscar Wilde
Bzzzzt... Try again.
Copyright is intended to encourage artists and authors to share their creations with everyone else. In return for this, they recieve *for a limited time* sole rights to distribute their creation, and the law will enforce this. But not even the creator can *own* an idea. And the only way to *steal* an idea would be to copy it from someone, then run current through their brain to remove their memory of it. Because a fundamental part of the concept of "theft" is that the former owner loses it. I know, "copyright infringement" isn't nearly as newsworthy as "theft," but I'm afraid you're going to have to live with that.
Oh, and nice ad hominem attack there. Always good when you don't actually have any real response to someone.
--
There is no sin except stupidity -- Oscar Wilde
You sound like an RIAA drone, saying that all MP3 users wear black overcoats, have thick, unkempt beards, and spend their time reading the anarchist's cookbook and making evil plans to hack The Establishment.
In reality, however, I think a Fight Club quote, oddly enough, is most appropriate. "The people you are looking for are the people you depend on. We do your laundry, cook your food and serve you dinner. We guard you while you sleep."
Hmmm, let's see. What percentage of students at technical universities do you suppose are Napster users? I bet it'd go over real well with the IT industry to start throwing large numbers of their future employees in the slammer for downloading 'naughty files'.
There are literally millions of people who would have to be arrested if this were enforced. Entire companies would be gutted of their workforce. It's like saying, "Everyone whose last name begins with a vowel, please report to the nearest correctional facility".
The US has 1 million people in prisons, and that's friggin ridiculous. You are suggesting that this number could go up by factor of 20 or so, and as a bonus put a significant portion of it's technical elite behind bars, and nobody is going to notice? I think not.
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Dyolf Knip
If I have 6,400 mp3 albums that I've traded for (hey, guess what, i do) then that doesn't mean that I've taken away 6400 x $15 = $96,000 out of the artist's pockets! There is no way I could afford that, and never would have bought them to begin with.
So the same can be said with Napster. The only argument you have a leg to stand on is that my mp3 collecting (and others) has kept us from buying CD's. And there has been no proof of that. In fact, the record companies have gained 2 billion dollars that they expected to increase last year (what was...from 15 to 17 billion now?) and they'll increase another 2 billion by next year...
Also, how do you explain Eminem's world record breaking first-week sales, even though it was floating all over Napster up to a full month before it was officially released?
I agree I don't think the solution is that musicians should get $0 for their work. But I am saying that Napster usage isn't/wasn't causing that in the first place! The RIAA was doing a hell of a better job at it than all the "free" music in the world. And they've been doing it for quite some time---lots of practice.
Hey...as soon as the creator of Rock and Roll (Bo Didley) gets what he deserves from the record companies, then I'll start paying too!
Rader
I mean, yeah, it may be illegal, but I don't see them cracking down like that on the mafia or anything else.
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seumas.com
in a belguim newspaper, recording industry rep said that thursday (15 feb) their new "search engine"
.be we should make randomdata files and name them "br174ny sp34r5.mp3" send them back an forth
was going on line that would allow them to "find" all the ip adresses of ppl useing napster or simular software,
and they already had a list of 100 legaly intresting ppl, who they would turnover to the police
maybe in
over napster and watch the cops arrest you for sharing random data
42
This is extreme though, and these types of punishments have only been dealt with professional pirates that bootleg and make millions off of the sales.
Heh. Drugs and listening to music...pretty close, alright.
Rader
We need to focus on the problem, not specific parts of the problem. Yes, society has caused part of this, but so has the Internet. Fix that, and you wont have to worry about kiddie porn, or illegal MP3s.
Linuxisforcommunists.org
Take for example sites like indymedia which holds a public "tribune" where people can submit stories, video, audio and any kind of news, and, damn, get it KNOWN! The demos that happened in Seattle some time ago were covered, say, oddly by the mainstream media (e.g. CNN), that is: they conveniently omitted to mention that plastic bullets were being used and that people were basically getting their ass kicked. When indymedia and other sites published news contradicting this, with audio and video evidence, they had to change their story!
Of course, the problem is that not every one can afford a T1 and start an indymedia. (I'm sure some of ya slashdotters could, but whatever). The thing is that it's easier (or at least possible) to do that than to go broadcast on national tv! And you don't need much.. Just a bit of web space, a color scanner and you're on the run. I covered a demo down here in montreal that turned bad when the police came down on demonstrators with pepper spray and cavalry, I took some pictures and put it on the web. It makes quite an impression.
The industrial police has been there for a while, you know. Heck, thinking about it, police has *always* been industrial. Police forces were initially created by the state to force strikes to stop in the factories in the first days of industrialisation.
It's always been like this, police pretending to "protect and serve" when they "provoke and seize", the state pretending to have a "constitution" or "civil rights", when you're on paper or on a soap opera (like the evening news), it's all beautiful and nice, but when you get busted, it's not funny anymore. Just ask Mumia Abu Jamal...
Semantics is the gravity of abstraction
In terms of the cost benefit analysis that are done by drug departments in police forces, when they are trying to stop the distribution of illegal contraband, they do prioritize their activitiies according to the market value of the supposed contraband. One evidence of this kind of thinking is the fact that drug busts usually announce the value of the drug that was seized.
Goat sex free since 2001
If you break the law by infringing on someone's intellectual property, and do so repeatedly in spite of warnings, what do you think will happen?
:-)
Caveat: I don't think it's right to enforce copyright laws AND impose a blank-media tax. That's screwing consumers, left, right, and center. You should only be screwed once
Slashdot cried when the record companies went after Napster. "Deal with the law-breaking individuals," they said, "leave the company alone." Now, the record companies and artists are going after the users, and we're still crying. Why? Are we all hypocrits?
I agree that much is broken with the current copyright system and recording industry. That doesn't give you carte blanche to rip off artists. Personally, I fulfil my moral obligations to the artists by donating through Fairtunes. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like many other people do (judging by donation stats).
Go ahead and flame me. I ask only one thing of you if you do: come up with a viable scheme for artists to make money from their work. If you can't think of one, you can hardly blame the record companies for clinging to what they have.
I don't quite understand your logic; can you please explain. You seem to be saying that the value of "busting a kid" is equal to the amount of illegally gain profit that will be prevented. For example a drug bust that cost $10,000 is only worth while if you beleive that the drugs were going to be sold for more than that amount. Honestly I don't see the relation (which doesn't mean there isn't one... I just don't get it). Shouldn't the cost of an operation be compared to the value to society and not the possible value to the criminal (and doesn't enforcement of law have its own inate value to society; see Socrates). Please reply
1) Police *searched* homes for evidence. THey did not arrest.
2) Those searched were users of a website. The authorities were *contemplating* Napster cases.
If this were an actual comment, people would give a crap and it would be worth posting!
samrolken
Furthermore, everyone who copies a song would not otherwise have bought the CD, so the company's not losing business they would have had. CD prices being what they are, I can't afford them. And since when is it a crime to make a company lose business? I do it all the time by choosing to buy from store A over store B. Should store B be allowed to sue me for not paying them for merchandise I opted not to get from them?
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Dyolf Knip
M$ claims that X is bad in many ways. M$ does not want X used at all, anywhere. M$ claims that X is a threat to our very way of life. M$ wants to 'educate' legislators about how evil X really is. Well, what is it that legislators do? For one, they make things legal or illegal. Would M$ want X to be legal? I think not.
But yes, it would be nice if those trained monkeys who poke and prod our submissions read the article in question as well.
--
Dyolf Knip
>I have yet to meet a real artist that didn't like
>napster. (metallica don't count they are NOT
>artists.)
They're not? Is that because you personally don't like their music? Or is it because they don't like napster and therefore constitute a counter-example to your theory?
Enquiring minds want to know.
--
* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
"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?"
--
This morning (Feb. 16) the following appeared in Belgian newspapers and the national radio news. Marc Verwilghen, Belgian minister of Justice (who, BTW, became very popular in Belgium because of his rather strict and efficient approach to the child porn scandals and subsequent justice reform a few years ago) has publicly declared that sueing Napster users will receive lowest priority from Belgian justice.
What actually happened: IFPI (the Belgian record industry lobby) looked up IP numbers for about 12.000 Napster users and sent them letters of complaint via their ISPs. About one hundred of these users were apparently found to be 'persistent in their evils' and are now sued by IFPI, who wants to fine each of these people for about $25.000. Today, the Belgian ministry of Justice has publicly declared that it frowns upon IFPI's practice of scanning people's IP #s and requesting domiciliary visits, stating that "public prosecutors should sue in such cases, and examining magistrates are the ones able to issue search warrants. Not private companies, not organisations like IFPI". And, as stated, Belgian justice will give lowest priority to prosecuting people who download music illegally -- they might be more strict about people who provide illegal mp3s, though.
Also, the 'Commissie voor de Persoonlijke Levenssfeer', a Belgian organisation which wants to protect consumers' privacy rights, is protesting against the way in which IFPI has been scanning people's IP numbers. They claim that IFPI's systematic 'tattling' is against these people's fundamental privacy rights.
I hope I've been accurate enough in describing all this; English is not my native language. For those among you who read Dutch it might be interesting to check the websites of the Flemish newspaper De Standaard and of VRT teletext (Flemish broadcasting organisation).
It seems like it would be easy to track users who download illegal music, and so easy to catch. This leads to a paradox, in that the people who commit lesser crimes can be punished more severely. (Of course, what constitutes a lesser crime is a judgement call.)
Travis
They way Salon phrases this story, they make it sound they are arresting Napster users....instead they are just enforcing copyright laws like they should be.
ÕÕ
Actually they do change people's submissions. They cut and paste for effect and created their own headlines as well.
Trust *nothing* that comes from slashdot until you can verify it.
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
I sincerely hope that the kids who have been making a joyful noise in Zurich and Davos hightail it to Belgium to give the anti-expression police their due.
I mean, seriously, folks. The value contained on a hard drive of pirated music may be more than it costs to bust the kid, but the actual value there- the kid wasn't intending to sell the music at ALL- makes this operation a huge, expensive waste of time.
The Euro Union loves to rule by fiat, and it loves to show international organizations that it's willing to play by the hard-bitten anti-fair-use rules promulgated in USia. Oh well, so much for enlightenment..
Goat sex free since 2001
What I would love to know is how the cops traced the napster users back to their homes. Although my napster registration goes way back a few years, I don't remember giving out any "Real Life" information, certainly not my address, and if I did, I surely didn't enter the true info simply because it's none of their business. They could easily find out generally where I'm living (based on my IP) but that's way too broad to finger it down to a home address. Puzzled, I am.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
"The problem is voter apathy."
Yes. But what to do?
And how is it possible that the 'education' system, after having twelve generous years to work its magic, spits out apathetic citizens?
I mean, who would benefit from that?
Isn't the education system supposed to make people smarter and more interested in life? When you look around, can you tell if it's working?
Some might say "you can lead a horse to water..."
Well, if you drag a horse to water with all your might, then force his head in the trough for hours at a time... after twelve odd years you could turn the poor thing off of water all together.
And what would that accomplish?
James.
With the passages of new content laws in the EU and US, it seems we are coming one step closer to having industrial police running our streets. Gutenberg's printing press brought books to the masses and resulted in an advancement of personal living standards. Let us just hope that the internet eventually serves to redeem itself by benefiting mankind and not the corporations. It's be an awful shame if the internet were responsible for the privatization of the world's governments.
Pax Digitalia
Regarding napster or any P2P thing, all I can say is: please include my content in whatever peer-to-peer network is the latest greatest thing.
Here: www.besonic.com/chrisj
I am not essentially a consumer. I don't have time to keep in touch with the latest P2P developments- because my time is spent keeping in touch with what affects me as an artist.
It may interest you to know that as an artist using P2P as distribution, I have access to print-to-order stuff over the net, everything from T-shirts to mousepads to coffee mugs, all of which can have my GFX or whatever on it, and I can get paid for selling _real_ _tangible_ stuff... and the very latest development (ampcast.com, just the other day, announced this one) is that I can go to a _good_ hosting service with a fair contract and good artist relations and get Red Book Audio CDs burned to order over the net. This isn't ready yet but it's due by the end of March: I supply a CDR master (I can get professional quality as will quickly become apparent: this is what I do...) and they keep it on file, burn from it when a copy is ordered and keep an image of the CD for 30 days on HD in case of repeat orders to save on filing and handling hassles.
I can't begin to express how awesome this is: it's the first time I'm aware of that a musician could set up a burn-to-order fulfillment service (and not have to deal with juggling CDR blanks, inventory etc, or even taking orders) and be selling full-on, uncompressed, bit-for-bit untampered Red Book Audio CDs over the net, with color booklets and inserts! It's the epitome of the internet musician's wet dream, and should be a very nice business for Ampcast.
And it profoundly legitimises peer-to-peer: now, mp3s (or whatever) really _have_ a value. If they get into the hands of someone who wants a proper REAL CD of the music, now they can have one- and if nobody wants one, hey, nobody's out anything! Ampcast just stores one extra boring CD in the files, they're not out the cost of printing up thousands of the things, and I'm not out anything either, except the cost of the CD blank.
This year will see the final maturing of the complete product support network for the internet musician- with burn/print to order for everything from shirts to full-on audio CDs to fscking _mousepads_ we're practically at the level of 'Jackson 5' merchandising capabilities, without using the record industry. That is very, very exciting... now the only thing I'd like to see is print-to-order _posters_... that is just about the only thing left that isn't already covered!
Amazing, amazing... and P2P is the distribution network for publicising this stuff. None of it expects any sort of formal promotion efforts- it's all totally grassroots... which I think is no sort of accident, I think this is the natural reaction to increasing corporatization. People _want_ to discover their own stuff, even stuff that's 'no commercial potential' (as written on old Mothers Of Invention album covers), and having discovered it they'll buy tangible stuff to go with the free digital stuff they have, so long as the tangible stuff is good. What they won't do is be forced to pay money for totally intangible digital stuff that the corporate seller didn't have to pay anything to copy out- that's doomed, the future of making money fairly through IP is being able to offer stuff that is physical and real, that people might enjoy. (Italicisation of stuff in honor of Frank Zappa's typographical style and George Carlin)
Seriously, I always suspected but now I know that the future of being a small indie 'content producer' is to take complete advantage of everything that you can possibly give away or share for free- any digital files, etc, anything at all that you don't have to pay for actual materials, throw it out there! And then, find something that you can sell that is _tangible_ and physical, stuff to rumple and fetish as FZ put it. Shirts to wear, CDs to give nicer sounds and be hard-copy that can't be lost in HD crashes, mousepads to use (different band for every day of the week, why not?) mugs to hold COFFEE etc etc, _physical_ stuff.
Because the equalising effect of worldwide communications makes it possible... put it this way. I've been on besonic for a while, rarely if ever do any promoting, but for some reason lots of people in Sweden have listened to my music. Who knew? I have a track off an electronic album that is very warm and mellow called 'Wood Dragon': at one point it was one of the highest ranking easy listening tracks in Japan. Again, who knew? Supposing I saw that and decided to explore the easy-listening-electronic area some more for the people in Japan who enjoyed it, throwing in some woodflutes and obscure pentatonic intervals (I researched Japanese melodies for a later track and quite liked them). Supposing I made lovely high-fidelity audio CDs available, and stuff like shirts and mousepads, minimising English text and sticking to elegant graphic designs since I know that it's Japan which was showing an interest in the stuff. I could do quite well that way- not getting rich, but paying some bills and buying more synths etc- by doing _good_ _work_ and selling only tangible, real stuff. This is real. The future is now...
So support the P2P networks! This is not about greedy consumers wanting stuff for free. It's about communication and _information_ and I promise you, as an artist, I couldn't GET demographic information like that out of the record companies. The only alternative to P2P and artist independence is the record companies (and other forms of distribution controls and let me tell you a little story... I hang out on a mastering engineer list- and recently one of the top guys came out with a chilling story. He'd worked with an artist for weeks to get the ideal mastering for the artist's CD, testing it in actual clubs, working like mad to balance it just perfectly so it was the best it could possibly be. Then a new A&R guy was assigned to the artist, and against my engineer friend's AND the artist's wishes, decided to assign the mastering to another mastering guy: which is known as a 'shoot-out'. Usually the label wants 'louder, brighter, more' from such a situation, and it's gotten to the point where mastering engineers are _ruining_ the sounds of records just because the labels are _demanding_ that the new record's gotta be louder than the next guy. My friend, I believe, did a terrific job on the CD- just what the ARTIST wanted- but it is _always_ possible to make a CD louder by making it sound worse. And I think that's just what's going to happen, and I pity the artist, because all their work is going to be butchered by a mastering job that squashes it into extreme loudness and ruins the tone- it probably won't even sound as good in the clubs! All because of a new A&R guy who outranks both the original mastering guy and the artist. It's anybody's guess as to whether the artist's career can survive releasing a CD that sounds like crap- you don't get many chances in the music business, and the new mastering engineer has a vested interest in making his mastering sound as _different_ as possible from the original one that took so much painstaking work.
Now, all the mastering guys are absolutely miserable about this general state of affairs, it's hurting the industry, it's hurting the sound of modern releases, and there seems to be no way to get the record companies to stop doing it.
But now, indie content producers can put out full quality audio CDs and none of them are forced to do any such thing- they have _total_ freedom to do whatever their artistic judgement dictates, with the result succeeding or failing purely on its merits- the 'word' of it getting out primarily through word-of-mouth and P2P. THAT is why artists desperately need P2P to thrive and continue- because without it, it is less and less likely that the consumer will even be allowed to hear their art, because already if they have to go through existing channels, the consumer IS NOT allowed to hear their art until label suits have specified which songs, albums etc will be allowed to be released, until A&R guys have dictated the use of mastering engineers counter to the artist's wishes and specifically told the mastering guy to ruin the sound to make it louder louder louder, until corporate execs have decided which markets they're even going to sell the CD in and which markets they are not going to allow it to be available at all.
Only then does the consumer get to 'choose' what they want.
Free market, hell!
I only hope that these people that were arrested for using napster weren't also users of or addicts to PHP....that could be a deadly combination. (or is that pcp? doesn't matter, they would arrest you for it anyways)
The anti-salmon
No, just a bigoted and ignorant post like that is an almost dead giveaway of an English or American identity.
You're joking, right?
So, let me get this straight. It's a crime to use software to combine zeroes and ones in such a manner that sound can be reproduced...
No, it's not. It's a crime to use software to combine zeroes and ones in such a manner that a copyrighted work can be reproduced.
It's a crime to use someone else's creation, the software, that does this
It's a crime to do it; the means are largely irrelevant.
But there were. The Copyright Act of 1976 forbids this in the United States.
You could equally argue that the thief who steals the physical article wouldn't have bought it, and CDs only cost a tiny amount to make. I realise of course that the shop may have paid a fair amount for the CD, but consider a single organisation which makes and retails CDs from studio to finished product - would you not agree that they have just as much right to prosecute a thief?
The crime here is that a group of people have created information content and laid down legally-binding conditions on its use - according to copyright law, it is their right to do that. You cannot agree with that and disagree with the practice of enforcing that law. If you disagree with the principal of copyright law, then we have a different argument on our hands...
Hi! Important fact in all this: the Belgian minister of Justice already stated that our courts will apply the lowest priority to these cases (for the individual Napster users that is). So probably a lot of fuzz about nothing... Lodin
So you are saying that the principal of copyright is totally against public opinion?
I would like to see you quote a survey that shows that to be the case.
Enough said on that...
If you read the article that is reference thoroughly, it should be clear that the arrests were related to mp3blast.com, and not Napster. Yes, apparantly they are investigating Naster cases also.
It's really amazing though how critical people are about other countries. Which is strange to come from people in a country where a show like Jeopardy can have an international contest with a US 5 time champion as one of the "international" contestants, putting that US champion against people that do not have english as their native language, and then (I guess) be proud that surprise-surprise the US contestant wins.
See my point?
The linked article does not state anything about arrests. The first paragraph says:
Acting on complaints from the music industry, police have raided the homes of users of music-sharing websites looking for evidence they infringed copyright rules, the prosecutors' office said Thursday.
Let's get the story straight here - houses were searched. In addition:
He said the searches were part of an investigation of the Internet site mp3blast.com, but added four cases against Napster users were currently under review.
These are not Napster users (necessarily), but that of the now-offline site mp3blast.com (see for yourself. According to the article (at least) no searches have been conducted due to user activity on Napster, 4 cases are under review.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
No, it's still illegal; if the owner took you to small claims court she'd win easily. But she'd only get the value of what you copied, which combined with the rules for small claims courts makes it not worth pursuing for major artists.
I would like to know how fo these Belgian police know the difference between people using Napster for illegal copying and people using it for dtrictly legit purpose i.e. artists which WANT their music all over napster.
__________________
Just a guy with an opinion
Question, how many of you Napter users have ever bought a CD?
;-)
Ok, everyone lower your hands.
Next question, how many of you would ever buy a CD again if the record company had you arrested?
And I thought only Microsoft treated their customers this way
You mean, like somebody was stupid enough to give all his info when opening an account with napster? well da hell when 'em newbies, they deserve to be arrested :)
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
"Marcel Heymans,"
"Hey, mans!" [I didn't say it was sophisticated humor...]
"general director of the Belgium branch of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry,"
'Phonographic'? There are no phonographs involved in this case! Get yerself an up-to-date group name and then we'll talk.
"said he warned police of alleged copyright infractions. Heymans said his organization had tracking equipment that could search for users "by the thousands."
Whoa, thousands, dude! That's, like, a lot, right? ...well, it is Belgium...
________________
________________
Private Essayist
In other news, a man caught shoplifting CDs from a local record store in East Brunswick, New Jersey was arrested today for theft.
Can you believe that? They arrested someone! For stealing! First the thieves, then the child molestors and rapists! What's this world coming to?
No, they don't A musician is someone who makes music. If they made guitars, they'd be guitar makers, wouldn't they ?
But if you wish to become a professional, you'd best find a way to make money. Selling stuff works great, especially CDs.
The musicians job is to create the CD, not to sell it. Someone who sells CDs is called a "vendor", not a musician. A professional musician is someone who can create music that people are prepared to pay to hear, without incurring too many costs. Musicians can create their own mini-retail business, but this is a seperate business to creating the music.
Now, they can do most of it on their own, and use those nifty world wide distribtution networks to get the word out, marketing wise, about their music.
Win-lose situation -- the audience get something for nothing, but that's largely because the musicians are working for free. What happens when the musicians want to start paying bills ? How is the free distribution network going to make money ? Does a lot of listeners mean a lot of revenue ? I still remember Corel boasting about the number of downloads WP had, apparently ignorant of the fact that downloads do not bring in revenue and that courting potential customers who don't want to pay for things is a lousy business model.
Anyone who thinks Napster was free, even in a monetary sense, is fooling themselves. Computers cost money, bandwidth costs money, ripping music takes time, time usually costs money. All of these things are taken care of by "freeloaders" who spend at least $20 mo (I spend $100) for bandwidth, and $1000s for their individual nodes. It is a very expensive network, but one where 99% of resources come from the users.
The users play absolutely NO role in the creation of the product, merely its distribution. And it's the napsterites who have consistently argued that distribution is dirt cheap.
As for the resources, it often does not cost for the user. If they already have the bandwidth anyway, then the marginal cost of using napster is $0-. If they are using somebody else's bandwidth, it costs them $0-. If you already use a computer for other purposes, the marginal cost of computer power for napster is also $0. A lot of the slashdot herd seem to think that the fact that they have a fast computer and a fast connection means that they are somehow entitled to get everything for free. Well they are not.
If the people do indeed have the money for that kind of bandwidth, it makes it all the more despicable IMO -- they aren't doing it because they can't afford it, they are doing it out of sheer greed.
Building a business on the backs of these people in an ingenious business plan.
It's only ingenious if you can do it without screwing the artists.
It just that currently its legality is in question.
Not to mention the ethics. I think a major part of the problem is that to the freeloaders, the whole point of the scheme is to be able to circumvent copyrights, and they will never support a scheme that discourages freeloading.
I think that Napster is illegal, but if you want to prove it's not go ahead, prove it to the people trying to shut it down, not those who are sitting at their house saying how bad it is, and it should be shut down. I think the whole argument is dumb, but if you want something to happen don't sit at you're computer arguing on a message board, go do something about it. I on the other hand will be working on something worth while.
Go to this (link below) e-the people petition and sign it then pass it on to others that would be interested in signing. Do this if you want to petition the US Government about saving Napster and P2P File Sharing and Networking. The Internet was created around P2P Sharing. E-The People Napster Petition
American reporter: So, are Belgian authorities now aware of the piracy caused by Hotline and Carracho servers run amuck distributing Adobe Photoshop and such?
Spokesman: We're looking into that, but this situation is far more serious than that. We have found that various American companies have had their complete operating systems pirated, source code and everything!
American reporter: Did Belgian hackers steal the Windows 2000 source code?
Spokesman: No, fortunately. However, professional hackers are now using a system called "mirroring" to propagate both the source code and compiled programs of American companies. On their underground web sites, they seem to idolize some uber-hackerwho goes by the handle RMS. We have contacted the companies but they haven't gotten back to us yet.
American Reporter (mutters): No wonder you people can't hold the Germans every couple decades. Jesus!
--
--hongpong.com
We've all pretty much extablished that 'sharing' copyrighted music is illegal. Not only in USia, but in most countries around the world. If I recall, there's only two countries that do not observe US copyright law.
According to the article, the police only arrested those "who had been clearly warned yet persevered with the practice." so they sure as hell couldn't have claimed ignorance.
I know most slashdot readers are long-haired freedom zealots, but can someone please explain to me how this is in any way surprising. Look at the facts, people: You're stealing. It doesn't matter whether you're stealing MP3's from recording artists, or you're stealing physical items from retail stores, the fact of the matter is, It's still stealing. If you steal from a store, the store is the victim. If you mug someone on the street, the person you mugged is the victim. If you steal MP3's, the recording artist who invested a great deal of time and money into their art is the victim. As long as the crime causes anyone hardship, it must be stopped!
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
They release poor quality product, they treat their artists and customers like dirt, and they relentlessly attack anything that might infringe on their total control of their industry regardless of the consequences.
I will not patronize them.
On the other hand, if someone set up a site distributing pirated copies of Windows 2000, i'd fully support Microsoft's right to sue them.
Instead of worrying about people who are breaking the law, we should be concentrating on the use of technology to free artists from music industry contracts that rip all of us off.
Sort of brings new meaning to the word "phlegm", no?
There is a searchmachine launched by the belgian IFPI (which represents all the music lables aka "Incomptetent Firm for Pestering Internetters") which can track down 12000 napster users in a minute. They say they will sue people and take away their comp. However the belgian minister of Justice stated that there is no alliance between the IFPI and any governmental institution, including police. Even better, he's going to look into the case and find out if what they are doing is not a violation on the privacylaw in Belgium. Like it has to be proven, of course it is, IFPI gets your IP, then your provider needs to mach that IP to your home address, bingo, violated the privacylaw. It's all blown up, overstated, and just to scare people from using napster... They say it's robery, well a cd costing 700 Belgian francs or 15$, now that's robery!
This sounds pretty scary. What happens if your ISP uses dynamic IP's, as most ISP's do? Don't assume police would know about dynamic IP's, this is Belgium after all, that we're talking about.
Case in point, in the olden days, if you, as a foreigner, couldn't/wouldn't pay a speeding fine (which could amount to more than $3000) in Belgium, you could get banned from ever entering Belgium again with your car. Infractions against this ban where punished with instant confiscation of the car.
Only trouble: in Belgium, you would keep your license plates when you bought a new car, whereas in all neigboring countries, the license plates stayed with the car. You guessed it: people buying used cars in those neighboring countries then not only needed to worry about getting not a lemon, but also whether it was safe to take that car to Belgium...
They're doing something illegal, they've had a caution and they ignored it, now they've been arrested...where's the problem again?
And as an aside, isn't this what everyone always wanted? "Don't sue Napster...go after the users who are just using the software for illegal purposes"?
Dead on. (I'd have modded you up but I wanted to chime in, too.)
The piece of the Napster defense that I agree with totally is the claim that they're just an indexer, the file transfer is between two users, and when a copyright infringement occurs it's the work of the users.
Zorching Napster for "abetting" the copyright infringement has a "chilling effect" on other search engine authors (and other pointers-out-of-resources) by making them responsible for any misdeeds by users of their product. So they have to both self-censor and put in a lot of extra work to avoid culpability.
This theory could be used, for instance, against crime reporters to keep them from pointing out the neighborhoods where drug dealers hang out. If a reader goes there and buys drugs, suddenly it's RICO time for the reporter for "abetting".
But copyright violation IS against the law. So if the Napster users WERE actually making copies of copyrighted works in violation of the law, their neck is on the block, and correctly so. It was very nice of the prosecutors to give them a warning and only come after them when they persisted. Now they get to have their day in court, and the courts will determine if their particular copymaking constitutes fair use.
Penalties for copyright violation are draconian. This is because it's so hard to actually catch the violators. So when they do catch one they make an example of him.
The legal system's solution to the "whack a mole" game is to use a BIG mallet and hope the spray of gore scares off the rest of the moles.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
You have the classic free-rider problem, though. Even if you're guaranteed to get your money back if X isn't published, you're still better off by letting others pay, and getting the product free.
Also, how would the street performer protocol deal with "One Hit Wonders"? Bob publishes his smash hit single "Crying for Napster", and everyone loves it. Subsequently, everyone donates money to fund the publishing of "Gunning for Gnutella", which turns out to suck the big one.
In the current system, you wait for the reviews, and you just don't buy it if it sucks. In the SPP, you've already paid by the time anyone finds out it sucks.
Yes, reputation, yadda yadda, but how well will that work in areas where a given person often only publishes one or two works (think college textbooks)?
There are many, many flaws with SPP.
here you can read (french) that a student was condemned for linking to mp3 files ...
other info :
http://www.zdnet.fr/cgi-bin/a_actu.pl?File_ini=a_a ctu.zd&ID=18312
http://www.zdnet.fr/cgi-bin/a_actu.pl?File_ini=a_a ctu.zd&ID=18313
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
Heymans, the spokesperson for the IFPI (aka: RIAA) has publicly declared war on the individual napster/MP3 user. IFPI has gathered data on the napster users by using a search robot, and has warned users to stay away. People that continued using napster were blacklisted, and Heymans stated that the names on this blacklist have been handed to the authorities. He also told the press that these people could expect a visit by the police shortly.
Marc Verwilghen, minister of justice responded to this that:
People don't get raided because IFPI wants it to, they get raided when a judge gives an order.
Napster/MP3 has "lowest priority" in our courts.
The search robot IFPI used to track down the napster users could possibly be illegal due to our privacy laws. This may be investigated further (and will no doubt be used by the defense attorney in case anyone should be prosecuted).
To put it bluntly, the minister of justice told IFPI that they're not the law.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
Musicians can create their own mini-retail business, but this is a seperate business to creating the music.
Yes, but all I'm talking about is a website. Once it is built (and built decent) upkeep would be minimal.
How is the free distribution network going to make money ?
The free distribution network doesn't need to get money. The value is created through a bartering of services, so to speak.
The users play absolutely NO role in the creation of the product, merely its distribution. And it's the napsterites who have consistently argued that distribution is dirt cheap.
Yes, that is their role, distribution as promotion (what else can you call it)
As for the resources, it often does not cost for the user. If they already have the bandwidth anyway, then the marginal cost of using napster is $0-.
Not necessarily so. The possibilities of Napster have become a drawing point for people to upgrade their connections, paying more money for more bandwidth. There is also a labor cost, (outside original creation) which is completely absorbed by the user.
If the people do indeed have the money for that kind of bandwidth, it makes it all the more despicable IMO -- they aren't doing it because they can't afford it, they are doing it out of sheer greed.
You have some serious negative stereotypes of the people who use these services. Yes, it works better with a faster connection. Anecdotal evidence, I just bought "The Hour of Bewilderbeast" after downloading a bunch of tracks becasue I read a good review of the music. Where else can I get this preview so easily? Did the person who paid for the connection that provided the song that convinced me to buy the album steal from the artist?
It's only ingenious if you can do it without screwing the artists.
Then I'm sure you're fully supportive of Napster's new initiative.
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you can't be arrested in Belgium for possesing pot, but you can be arrested for using napster?! what the hell?? (They just passed pot decriminalization laws simular to the netherlands there)
I think it's funny that everyone is attacking this Coward Anonymous guy for saying things about Belgium, assuming that he's American. How do you know he is? Aren't those the very same types of assumptions that non-Americans get furious about when Americans make them? Would everyone be attacking him for his criticism if he was known to be Belgian?
Josh Sisk
"But there are worse crimes" is a lame excuse, you can't blame it on the police, they didn't make the law, they are just enforcing it. Continuing to break a law after you have been notified that you are breaking it is rather stupid.
I do not find this off topic. It may not be on the topic of the story, but it IS on topic by the fact that I could not read any attached comments to this story for quite a while.
It make you wonder why they are called pedophiles. The word means child lover. A murderer is not a lover.
What really get me, is that homosexuals are not called homophiles, and sex is not portrayed as the main point. Pedophiles are portrayed as sex being the main point yet that is not what the word means.
Maybe if the world had more people who loved children (pedophiles as opposed to pedosexuals), or at least if they weren't hunted down like that witchhunt in the UK, the world would be a better place.
But more importantly, this only applies to the Belgians.
In Germany they first came for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me -- and by that time, no one was left to speak up.
--Pastor Martin Niemoller
apply XOR 0x03 to characters in email address
You may cowardly try to hoist a veil of freedom of speech, but in the end, it is stealing, plain and simple. You may not like having to pay for work, but IT IS THE ARTIST'S RIGHT, PLAIN AND SIMPLE.
We must rise up and unite against the scourge of Napster, and its ilk. I commend our ally, Belgium, for setting such a noble and well-deserved precedent that I am sure will be emulated the world over. Thank you, and God bless America.
-- George W. Bush President, United States of America -- George W. Bush President, United States of America
--
George W. Bush
George W. Bush
President, United States of America
The laws required to prosecute these people can take 18 months to be passed, yet these raids were carried out as early as last december! What gives, how come we only hear about this now?
What makes you think they needed a new law? Copyrigt violation is already against the law.
You don't need a special extra law to say "It's also against the law if you use a computer" any more than you need one to say "It's also against the law if you use stone tablets, a chisel, and a mallet".
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I wrote it and my intent wasn't to imply that all Belgians are pedophiles.
It was only meant to stress the hypocrisy of things when the Belgian police was very quick to arrest those dangerous Napster users while letting the likes of Marc Dutroux run wild for months murdering 8 y/o girls.
Oh, it's not for acquiring the music, but in the way that we acquire it. So, let me get this straight. It's a crime to use software to combine zeroes and ones in such a manner that sound can be reproduced... It's a crime to use someone else's creation, the software, that does this, even though there were no laws existing previously saying that this was illegal.
Here in the United States, there is something called the ex post facto law...
Funny how Napster users are treated as criminals- but Puffy is supposedly okay! Be careful that your positions are internally consistent- on some level you're stubbornly defending Puffy's 'right' to earn money from rapping over other people's sampled music. It doesn't wash...
Well, they can't catch the pedofiles so hey, they just go after folks just trying to grab a tune on the net. "those who fear death are too weak to face life"
When in Belgium, use Gnutella :)
Now we see just as false report about "the Belgian police arresting Napster users" when in fact the police has only arrested people who operate "music-sharing websites", not Napster users. The Belgian police is reviewing four cases brought against Napster users though.
Perhaps I'm being overly critical but I don't think it would have been too hard for Timothy and Hemos to actually read those articles before posting them on Slashdot. And could you please refrain from jumping to conclusions too soon. Sometimes I think Slashdot is turning into some kind of National Enquirer for Geeks.
The the Music industry is willing to is sicking.
because unless I'm mistaken (and Salon didn't go into it, damn troll journalism) no doubt Mp3blast.com owners, who were the only ones to get raided as of yet, were not just typical napster users. I'd guess that mp3blast.com was an old school mp3 pirate site, with banners, hiddens links, top50 links, etc. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, the site (obviously) is gone.
Personally I think it should stay very illegal for people to make money off of the intellectual property of others without compensating the copyright owner. However, I think the free exchange of such things should generally be allowed, and definitely for music. I see nothing wrong with giving it away, I see something wrong with selling it.
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Well I'm baffled again. Did anyone bother to read the article again? They weren't arrasting or raiding napster users. They were raiding website operators. 'Course this can lead to napster users being targeted. But the only mention of napster in the article was that the ruling for going after these people came a few days after the appeals ruling over napster.
yvan eht nioj
Surely the whole point of arguments about intellectual property and electronic freedom is not that intellectual property shouldn't exist and that everyone has a right to rip off artist's work, but that technical systems which attempt to 'enforce' the laws hinder legitimate use of technology and make life worse for everyone (except the suits with their fingers in the pie). Thus efforts like SDMI, shutting down Napster and restricting the user's ability to access and use the data they have in their possession in any way they see fit within the spirit of copyright law are a Bad Thing. Charging extra for SCMS audio CDs is a Bad Thing - I personally don't like the fact that if I buy a CD to do live recordings onto a budget CD recorder then I have to pay extra for the medium because it is assumed that I will put it to criminal use. These 'solutions' do nothing to solve the problem whilst creating complexity and hindering legitimate use. But if you want any records or music or studios at all, somebody has to pay for it - copyright law itself is not a Bad Thing, and as such, I am personally in favour of zero-tolerance legislation to permit the enforcement of copyright law. I am led to wonder why record companies don't seem to be pressing this line particularly hard. I suspect the massive profits to be made from copyright 'protection' systems have something to do with it.
I don't really disagree with you on your points here, but there is one thing about this that really pisses me off. I'm not saying that artists or corporations don't deserve compensation for their work. What I am saying is that laws are being skewed to protect corporations instead of the individual. Do you really think the police would go after people downloading recordings of amateur/unestablished musicians whose recordings are copyrighted?
Maybe the Belgian police are trying to make an example out of somebody in order to scare others and deliver a clear message, but then again maybe not. The point is this: Don't the police have anything better to do than go after downloaders? Why are they not sitting in their cars in the red light district? Why are they not walking the streets to insure peoples safety? Surely there has to be more important criminals to go after.
I'm not justifying the actions of those who were warned about downloading. I'm simply saying that if this example is setting a precedent of what is to come, then we have more to worry about than Napster closing it's doors.
We are all pot-bellied, poorly-educated ass-scratching subhumans. It's undeniable. But please note, the story oonly insinuates that a significant minority of belgians are child molesters, betting odds are that you aren't. So don't get all huffy.
Maybe the psychs can make up another disease to go with this (they have made up enough of them), so we can go after the recording companies like we do after drug cartels.
Musical Addiction Dependency, or some such thing.
These people need help with their music addictions!
(not)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
coaster, and mugs, and cds, and whatever the heck else anyone will buy. Buy your band's domain names, get someone to make you a decent site, practice, put up a couple songs, practice, hope people like you enough to keep you on their hard drives, practice, tell everyone to listen to you, be really good at playing music, rinse, repeat. a simple recipe to success.
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this is a big heads-up for the whole "they got what they deserve" crowd. [/grumble]
My .02,
My .02,
zencode
iactivist.org/jason
Everybody talks about how IP protects the artist, and how we should be glad to pay and blah blah capitalist blah blah blah...
How many artists do you really hear complaining huh? - Maybe 0.000000009%?
All this anti-Napster is to protect record companies, and of them just the ones that are part of the RIAA!
They may have copied some songs. But sending the Police to their houses to arrest them is nothing other than corporations bullying individuals.
In fact, it makes you wonder who is the lowest here. The Belgian government for allowing it to happen, or the RIAA for applying the pressure?
"How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge - AK47
"How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge - AK47
RIMMER: Well, it'll be the nineteenth century for me. One of Napoleon's marshals. The chance to march across Europe with the greatest general of all time and kill Belgians. Marvellous.
This is true, and it may push it underground for awhile, but somebody will come up with the next killer music sharing app, and it will be main-stream again. For example, people traded mp3's online before napster, like on irc and stuff, but it ttok an easy to use app like napster to get it off the ground. I think this will happen again
C:\
C:\Dos
C:\dos\run
Sigs are against my religion