Slashdot Mirror
OpenNaps Targeted; Gnutella "Validated"
An Anonymous Coward writes "As early as Wednesday, the RIAA
has sent letters to the ISPs and operators of OpenNap servers in the U.S. which were
listed on Napigator. Here's the
story from ZDNET. The RIAA's letter refers to the U.S. Supreme Court decision against Napster. Given that nearly all the OpenNap servers are run by individuals who are never intending to charge for the service, this is an interesting assertion."
And HyperbolicParabaloid points out
this NYT story
(free reg. req.) in which a lawyer says the decision "validates Gnutella" (ok, whatever, but there's also some interesting discussion about how the Sony VCR time- and space-shifting precedent fails to apply to Napster).
Insightful?? Fucking hardly..
Get it through your thick skull, d00d. There is a limited supply of the SUV and you taking it removes it from someone else's possession. A COPY would not.
Shit, are people born these days simply devoid of intelligence???
You know wha't in there..
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb.
Cats: How are you gentlemen !!
Cats: All your base are belong to us.
Cats: You are on the way to destruction.
Captain: What you say !!
All your base are belong to US! What you say? For great justice :)
Obviously, the typical dumb-ass moderators don't know a good post from a hole in their ass.
Isn't this was what Chuck D was saying? Let's use the internet to promote new artists outside of the fat slob monopolies? Why in the fuck are we SO OBSESSED with downloading Metallica or Spears (or what the fuck her name is) when there's bands out there that may be worth listening to before they get sucked into the machine? Let's all promote bands who don't suck up those big fat assholes known as the record industry.
Fuck it. Based on the TRILLIONS of stories of how bands who sign up turn into sharecroppers (this is the worst kept secret by now), any dumb ass band who still wants the "big fat record contract" isn't worth listening to in my book. Even yesterday, the NARAS (Grammy) played rap listeners and built up the crappy media hype so someone would watch the Grammys, so it isn't any big mystery how these corporations treat bands and their listeners.
If you can't put two and two together yet and still try to download Metallica or whatever corporate hoe band, you get what rights you fucking deserve. And fuck the moderators if they don't think this is worth reading, it's the fucking truth.
SEE what crack does to you? SEE?!?
two points:
1. if you want to cash in cause your "artsy" and spend hundreds of hours in a studio, get a job, it seriously is not worth how much it costs in stores, your greedy pigs right down to the artists. i personally think when you spend 100 hours in a studio that even an acoustic set starts to sound like boring pre-recorded, layered, muzak. kudos to the independant scene that thrives on free distribution(and free distribution was done even before the internet, so this is not some "computer thing" to me as i read in one post, it is moral application to not gouge money from people when creating free expression. unless greed is what you were expressing). DIY or DIE.
2. FTP, it's the main way i get my mp3's. there is absolutely no way on the face of the earth that the RIAA can ban all use of file transfer protocol. therefore, RIAA can't effect the way I get my mp3's. i have a big list of FTP sites, and i share them with friends with similar tastes. no napster, no fancy client, no one to sue. they can shut down sites individually, sure. they just have to get court orders to seize and search all hard drives on earth. not bloody likely.
They can declare whatever they want as illegal, it is not going to have any impact on my mp3 collection nor will it effect how many mp3's i get in the future.
Go with MojoNation. It is cryptographically secure, even more decentralized than Gnutella, and is based on a very viable micropayment system.
I mean, maybe all *we* are reasonable people, but have you *met* a warez d00d? They don't give a flying fuck about the artists. And they're multiplying thanks largely to lameware services like Napster.
So nice argument, but it doesn't really work. I can't imagine you persuading anyone at the RIAA with that line.
/me wonders how long till slashdot is forced underground considering all the 'subversive' attitudes everyone seems to have :)
The answer is #1, because they are right. SOrry
Naw, I was combining a few genres there. Marilyn Manson and ICP might do a cover together someday I guess. ;-)
Fair market value? You're joking right? CDs have NEVER come down in price from when they were first introduced even though that was a big sticking point. They were more expensive than tapes and they're STILL more expensive than tapes even though they cost a fraction of what it cost to make a tape. The recording industry is fucking us up the ass if you think that is fair market value. Fair market value for a 5 cent pressed CD would be maybe $1.. $2 if at least half went to the artist.
Yeah, that's right you MPAA and RIAA fucks! Go to hell!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I myself registered so I lost track of the shared ones a while ago. "
:(
Yeah, and it's an encoded cookie too, so no checking it out on the hard drive
Artist's have every right to distribute their tunes however they want to. I haven't seen Napster users care in the least bit if the artist doesn't want their music pirated. It is easy to find Metalica, Aimee Mann, Courtney Love, She said that RIAA and Napster sucks, everyone seems to ignore that part rant, which was the only original part. And they do, there are many artist's who own their own record companies, Dead Kennedys, Ani Difranco, Beastie Boys to name a few, also there are record companies, Touch and Go for one, that give 50% royalties to their artists, guess what, I can find all of these bands on Napster. Either way, the record companys get a large percentage of the royalties, because they take all of the chances on the artists, they front the money for the studio, tour, equiptment (Bands get to keep the instruments, and cloths they buy with the record company allowence no matter how many records they sell). The less money that is in the music industry the less interesting music we will get. Ricky Martin's will always make money, it is people like Aimee Mann that will say "fuck this, I am going to be a web developer, that way I can get paid", then guess what the talentless /.'ers will be forced to take orders at the local BK because the real jobs will go to people with talent, and are willing to work for a living.
The real problem is trying to find a fair and effective way to distribute payment for creative works, because it costs no matter what. The napster mob would have the artists absorb the full costs, or almost the full costs -- they pay in time and effort. Copyrights OTOH provide an effective and fair distributed payment system.
This lie is repeated over and over -- that the RIAA labels only push cheesy pop tunes. This assertion is completely false. If anything, it's the napster thugs who listen to one-hit-wonders all the time (hence the complaint that they only like "one song" on the CD... ) I listen to Jazz music, some of it by fairly obscure artists, and most of the top jazz labels are RIAA.
Who cares ? History if nothing else will tell you that it's actually very easy for 50 million people to be wrong. The fact that they might have good reason to be angry doesn't make them right either -- most communist uprisings in history also involved large numbers of people, who had good reason to be annoyed with the powers that be. But that doesn't mean they were right. An angry mob is rarely capable of behaving ethically, and the fact that those they rebel against are wrong does not make them right.
The radio station pays rolyalty to the record company, that's the difference. thanks for playing.
Why not ? Shouldn't software engineers create and design software just for the love of it ? Shouldn't the same logic apply to any profession that is moderately enjoyable ?
No one gets into art because it's profitable. It simply isn't. However, it'd be really nice if good artists could make themselves a reasonable living.
When artists are paid only on commission, or for a live performance. That is, they earn their living like the rest of us,
How many people with CS degrees work for commission only ? Artists do not enjoy a stable income, unlike other professionals.
And don't anyone spout that tired old line about how no one will create without getting paid to do so
A better way to put it is that someone has to pay with their resources for the creative works. For example, the author needs to invest time to develop the work. If the author is compensated for their time, they can manage more than a few spare hours after work here and there. This doesn't in any way invalidate the free software movement. It's also true that free software authors can get more done if they have more time to spend on their work. However, ther eare more sources of corporate/academic sponsorship for developers.
Art is not an endeavor in which one should expect to "Earn a living". It is a gift which the artist willingly and lovingly shares with others.
Why should this not be true for any profession -- finance, economics, mathematics, software development, etc ? I'm sure anyone truly interested in these fields enjoys them and thinks that others should. But the fact that a profession is enjoyable doesn't mean that it is not worthy of financial reward. If you are a productive member of society, you should be rewarded for that, and this is true even if you enjoy your work.
Any artist who would give up his art because no one would pay for it, is most likely a very poor artist.
Any fan who doesn't think that artists are worthy of compensation is a very poor fan. BTW, artists who are not supported and have to work day jobs will obviously have less time for their art than full time artists, even if they enjoy it.
This comment is baseless, and IMO you are just airing your bias. It's inevitable that a culture that encourages , rewards and values innovation will be more innovative. It's interesting to note a strong correlation between countries that enforce their copyright/IP laws and countries that innovate.
Examples of proprietary innovation ? UNIX, MacOS, Postscript/PDF, Windows, Smalltalk, C, C++, Java, gif, RSA and Plan 9 either are or began as proprietary inventions. Most of the open source stuff plays copycat, though there are some exceptions.
The artists are being compensated if not very well. The RIAA model certainly works better than the Napster model where you just grab everything.
I agree that the record companies are a bunch of greedy thugs, but this in itself gives them more in common with the napsterite thugs than either party would like to admit. My take on it is that both sides are selfish thieving scumbags, it sort of reminds me of two school bullies fighting over a third kids lunch.
I hope the napster scumbags getlocked up and someone comes up with a better model (without cheating the artist) and the record companies all go out of business.
Depends on what you mean by "academic" and "research work". A lot of it took place at Bell Labs, Xerox-Parc, and Adobe -- not a University. None of it started out as GPL work, and none of it was licensed under something that RMS (or even ESR) would approve of. (and to this date, a lot of these things are semi-proprietary). BTW, add ssh to the list. (Yeah, I know there's a free copycat version but it didn't start out like that)
While I agree that a certain degree of openness helps (for example, making source available for peer review), I don't see any convincing arguments that OpenSource software is more innovative.
Now here's my challenge to you -- name at least 10 open source innovations, preferably GPL.
See Internet Relay Chat.
From what ive heard thers stuff in the works that runs on top of existing irc servers (think i read it here actually). Although if someone makes this work really well, and its really easy to use it could be a poison pill. The last thing we want to see is the RIAA/MPAA/BSA shutting down entire irc nets when it gets too popular.
How droll. That has absolutely nothing to do with what you allegedly are replying to.
Nowhere was there any mention of a lack of profit, or even a desire for production.
--
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
Alternatively, it creates a higher demand for live performances through a better distribution model wherein more people are able to listen to the artist's music enough to want to see them in person.
The live performance is where the money should be once the cost of the production is covered. Said production cost is easily recouped in performance fees, provided the production cost is small. Even better: you can not reproduce faithfully, a live performance.
In the case of digital music, ie. mp3s, oggs, etc., the recording label, or artist themselves, can set up a server and provide the music at a small(!!) fee, or free. This brings the cost of distribution down dramatically, well within the realm of concert fees.
What most people fail to realize is that the RIAA is realizing their monopoly is dying. The new age provides for artists to be able to deliver their music without using the RIAA, and this scares the hell out of the RIAA.
But wait, the big move from the RIAA hasn't happened yet. Wait till they buy the algorithm to the mp3 format. Then we will see them go after mp3s of all types, just as they did/do with cds (for the uninitiated, every time you buy a blank CD, money goes to them).
Long live ogg-vorbis.
__
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
Time to register a few 20Mb hosting sites in europe. What is the bandwidth requirements? Know any good hosting facilities where I can run opennap?
comment directly in my journal
Sorry but i fail to understand how this is an "insightful" comment...
The model of napster has proven to be profitable. The record comapnies want that profit. So what are they going to do? Chase after
There is no proof whatsoever that Napster is a profitable business idea. All they've done is burn through VC money thus far. The real challenge will be to see how many users stick around once fees are instituted, and how many will jump ship. But again, they haven't earned one penny from a single user, so there's no way you can call them "proven to be profitable"...
The only thing this far that can be proven about them is that they have, or that they pose a strong likelihood, of decreasing the profitablility of labels and musicians. Big difference, i think...
If you've paid for ADSL for the month, and they've cut you off, they're breaching contract.
...
.mp3 files that you wish to distribute must not be copyrighted material. Most .mp3 files found on the internet today are illegal copies of copyrighted music. Distribution of these files violates copyright infringement law and can not be distributed over the AT&T Road Runner service.
not a chance, really... Try reading the TERMS OF SERVICE for just about any consumer account available. Cable supposedly bars servers, but they seem to look the other way. DSL accounts see mto be more lenient in the server aspect, but most of the TOS's i've read
For instance, from AT&T/Mediaone Acceptable Ussage Policy:
Any
Separately, in their terms and conditions:
10.3 You agree to abide by the policies of the Road Runner Service as they are electronically posted and added to or modified from time to time. You agree not to use the Road Runner Service, including but not limited to the equipment and software provided by AT&T:
...
(c) for unauthorized access or distribution of any software, data, or material protected by copyright, patent or trade secret material;
...
10.5 For violation of these policies, AT&T reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to:
(a) remove any offending materials,
(b) hold the End-User liable for any damages resulting from such violations,
(c) terminate this Agreement and Your continued purchase of the Road Runner Service.
...
10.6 It is AT&T's policy to terminate Road Runner Service to account holders for repeated copyright infringements.
So really, read the terms of service as they apply to you before you pick up that phone. And don't imply anything about court stuff, if you ask me, because at that point they can call in they lawyers, and if you lose your case, guess who's paying for said lawyers?
I don't think this is correct, at least as regards to copyrights.
That one's much more important.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Then what exactly am I getting when I purchase music? The music industry seems to be making an implied claim of licensing by placing content controls on their intellecutual property. Without these claims of license, I should be able to copy the intellectual content and redistribute as I see fit. Just because they don't have a click-through when you play a CD doesn't mean there's not some license that accompanies it.
CSS is as much about playback control as it is copy control -- *how* does region coding affect copyright enforcement again? Oh, that's right. The OVERWHELMING majority of individuals have been mass-exporting cassettes overseas before the movie has been into or left overseas theaters. The "professional" grey market importers, the player re-chippers and the pro pirates will be stopped for sure. It has been beat to death by the DeCSS people, CSS doesn't do anything for people creating bit-by-bit copies of DVDs, either.
At least be honest here, the entertainment industry isn't interested in *any* copying of "their" works, fair or foul, and they seem to be headed to a single-use, approved-region-and-player control mentality. Whether I'm copying a DVD to cassette to view at the cabin or whether I'm ripping a CD to play on an MP3 player, they would really much rather I had to pay for a seperate copy of each one, and they'd love to see me pay each time I used it (DIVX anyone?).
By using a magic word called "contributory", as in "contributory copyright infringement".
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Perhaps, if the patent examiner had never heard of ftpd, httpd, etc.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
As long as you're being all holier-than-thou about grammar, why not try looking up "lot" and discovering that it's a noun, not an adjective.
Good call on "your", which unfortunately seems to be merging with "you're" on the net in much the same manner that "lose" and "loose" are. Jeez.
Ok, go to your local record store and raise a stink!
Pick up a CD from a shelf and ask for a sound clip. Granted, although major places like B&N, Borders, Tower let you listen to "album-du-jour" at the special stations, there're thousands of CD's they don't have for sampling.
Be obnoxious, ask for a manager, and tell them that friends recommended you this particular CD, but you want to sample it first!
... This will do nothing to the studios, because they have zillions of brain-dead zombies who buy whatever MTV plays as the "next greatest thing" - but it maybe worth your while!
Actually, we're already there. The artists who are managed by the RIAA member companies only get paid for live performances right now. The rest (and then some) gets taken by the record companies to fund the RIAA, label marketing, etc.
-Esme
You should have just made a copy of it instead.
Anybody up for starting a black market in untaxed hardware and media? If the RIAA, MPAA, BSA and other unholy organizations keep driving up prices, this is exactly what is going to happen.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
I'm sorry, but you're completely wrong here. Artists don't start out producing excellent works. They experiment first, learn the tricks of their trade, etc. You can't say that artists should be paid only for what they produce-no one could do this, because it takes years to become good enough to earn a living. And just how are they supposed to earn a living during this period? They can't, by your method. Mozart had to find a patron in order for him to produce his music. So did many other classical composers. Someone, somewhere, has to support the artists when they're starting out-you can't just say that they should create for the joy of it-it's hard to be joyful when you aren't eating. Maybe the best method for arts would be to revive the patronage system-rich millionaires could help sponsor musicians/artists.
Colin Winters
I'm not entering into the debate as to whether the Serbian actions were war crimes or not, simply providing examples here. Oh, I know all about Godwin - I'm claiming a temporary waiver on grounds of legitimate direct comparison.
WWII: Germany invades Poland. In exchange, Britain declares war and attacks Germany. Germany never threatened Britain before this point - indeed, Germany was trying to make peace with Britain and saw her as a natural ally. Later, the US declares war on Germany, despite also having been unthreatened.
WWI: Austria attacks Serbia. Germany acts in support of Serbia and notices that Russia and France (on its east and west borders respectively at that point) are likely to attack Germany as Russia's an ally of Serbia and France of Russia... Britain then goes to help France against German aggression to try and preserve the European balance of power, while some years later the US joins in against Germany.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Actually, Mozart never had a patron. He always sold or licensed his works.
Of course you are correct that most people don't contribute new content. But this does not constitute freeloading; on the Usenet, the only free rider would be someone illegitimately accessing a private server. A freeloader consumes a scarce resource on a P2P network without kicking in. That's not possible on Usenet, since you must be authorized to connect to well-performing Usenet servers. Mojonation goes to great pains to make freeloading impossible via a cryptographically secured economy. Napster is certainly very freeloader-vulnerable.
I'm hearing you say that Usenet uploaders are freeloaders. I don't think that is the commonly understood meaning of the term. Yes, the uploader gets the right to put a copy of his file on all the Usenet servers in the world. But in general this is considered a contribution, not a theft of others' network resources.
You're quite correct to say that most file transfers wouldn't make sense on the Usenet if they were legal. There are only a few exceptions I can think of, where the cost of distribution is high. I've used i-drive; it's annoying to use and I think it might be one of those VC-based business models like iwon.com that may not be around much longer.
I too am disappointed with the current primitive tools available for these functions using our existing p2p tools. mojonation has some interesting efforts to address the indexing and rating problems in a distributed way. Looking around us at the world today, I'm sure you're correct to say that it has taken revenue and profit to create most of the interesting stuff out there. Free software is an exception, but it's a small piece of the creative and engineering pie. And if you have revenue, client-server is the better way to go in distributing your wares. So I do agree with your basic point, if I've understood it correctly.Maybe in some utopian future, productivity and resources will become so vast that most creative output will be released for free, sort of the gift economy scenario. But this isn't the case today.
That sounds pretty reasonable, until you consider the gigantic and growing p2p piracy system known as the usenet. The advantage of the usenet over the web is the same as napster over client-server systems: by distributing the load among all the participating sites, the aggregate storage and bandwidth available is tremendously larger than any individual pirate could ever contribute. Sure, a big company could buy a lot of bandwidth, but pirates don't have access to those resources.
The Usenet is very hairy, but if copyright were abolished, I don't think it would go away. Same for p2p systems like Napster.
I got an RCN cable modem nine months ago and the performance from my Usenet server dwarfs my Internet performance, which is nothing to sneeze at. I get 0.5 - 1 megabits/sec of throughput from slashdot on a big comment page, and that's about as good as it gets for me Internet-wise. Most servers, of course, deliver far less throughput. But my usenet server gives me 2.5 - 7 megabits/sec of throughput.
You have a good point here; P2P is a security problem. But digital signatures by trusted folks would be a good solution to this problem. Here's hoping they catch on one of these years. In the meanwhile, this is only a problem for software; audiovisual material is fine. Actually there are such downloads. They are large media objects that are being given away for free by individuals. I'm thinking of amateur pornography in particular, but it's just the most extreme case because of its size. If I have five hundred megabytes of video that I want to distribute for free, I can't use an HTTP or FTP server to do it. The cost will be much too high. P2P, and Usenet in particular, is the only reasonable solution at this time.The free software community is so tech savvy that we keep ourselves nicely set up with ftp and web sites, even with no revenue to spend. Other free data communities, like fan artwork or cult video communities, find p2p more attractive.
I agree that client/server is best for a revenue generating corporation. It delivers ease of use, ease of administration, and control. But in the realm of free data, it's necessary for end users to kick in. Distributed p2p (including Usenet) is a viable solution that is working today. "Monied and legitimate downloads" is an inadequate measure; the non-monied stuff is of interest to me also.
Do we still have to pay to download their songs from Napster? If so, why?
Feel the fear and do it anyway.
copyright violation is a fancy type of theft.
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
if ip doesnt exsist then what do you listen to? what do you read? what do you look at? what does your computer run? without ip the world would be a boring place, and advances in science in technology would have stopped at the blunt object used to kill dinner.
They claim they are losing "potential revenue." That's a sick laugh. Potential revenue cannot be stolen because *it isn't theirs yet.*
sometimes people are injured, in say a car accident, and are not able to work. they sue (successfully) for lost wages something that wasnt theirs yet. if the injuries are serious enough they sue for what they would earn in the next say 10 months because they cannot work.that was potential revenue that was taken from them by the person who hit them. it isnt theirs yet, but in a legal sense it was considered to have been taken from them.
civil disobedience? really i would say people who use napster are not quite that idealistic. they are in it for the free music. if they were that idealistic they would boycott and refuse to purchase the music they are being overcharged for, and on principal they would refuse to listen to the music also. if enough people agreed and particpated (which is the amount of agreement that is required to change the laws) then the record companies would change their policy or go out of business. capitalism at its finest.
i'm not defending copyright or the abuse perpetuated by the record labels, but i'm also not going to deny their rights under the law.
what it comes down to is this. the laws are screwed up. they need to be changed. companies form business models around these laws, and are held accountable to those laws. If someone doesnt agree with the business model they can opt for "civil disobediance" and break the laws to get what ever product the company is producing. At this point i feel the company is justified in useing the laws to protect what it feels are in the companies best interest.
i would think the original poster would have a justifiable case if the record companies produced something that was necessary for life. lets face it, you dont need metallica to survive, the back street boys are not a suppliment for vitamin A. while christina and britany are great resources where silicon dioxide is concerned, it's simply not in sort supply.
more to the point, i've grown tired of people defending their actions with statments about having to pay too much. if you dont agree with the copyright policy any money should be too much. if you agree with it then dont use the too much argument to justify your actions.
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
It's fucking capatalist yuppies like you that screw everything up.
man i've never been called a yuppie befor. that really put a twinkle in my eye.
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
Amen, brother.
Sorry I don't have anything more insightful to say but I have to catch my ride.
The net result is that there will be no alternative to Napster until something of Freenet's strength becomes really practical and widely used. Until then its your loss, and theirs.
Someday they will figure out that, like video releases of films, letting the cat out of the bag will provide a valuable second market for music. But they will be dragged kicking and screaming into that decision that is as inevitable as it is profitable. And before that happens, they will waste a billion dollars smoking that "secure format" crack, while consumers just say, "No thanks, I don't need that stuff to be cool."
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
It's called "abuse of process" and its use without penalty is reserved for people with money and corporations.
Are you kidding me? Don't you think the major ISP's would _love_ to find an excuse to get rid of the bandwidth hogging alt.binaries hierarchy? This is a win-win for the ISP's--they get to point to the big bad RIAA/MPAA/lawyers _and_ they get their bandwidth back. It's only a matter of time.
After the RIAA makes OpenNap servers hard to find, the next stop is probably to write a bot that sends nastygrams to the ISP's of those running fserves on #mp3*.
I gotta get me one of those.
Now that napster seems to be ill-fated for good, which services do you think that could replace it in a "reasonable" way? I mean, opennap is still available (for now..) and there is gnutella, but I've never found anything besides opennap servers to be as good as the mainstream napster servers. Do you happen to know some file-sharing service that might replace napster one day?
--cyberdemo
--
I have no sig at all.
Quick question: I own the disc. My little brother crashes the disc. Don't I have the right to, somehow, get that audio back?
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I have no sig at all.
Obviously, what I was saying is that you have the legal right to get that audio back, whether you download an mp3, or copy your buds' cd, whatever. You have the right to the songs in a record.
--cyberdemo
--
I have no sig at all.
Spot on.
The canonical trilogy of cyberpunk novels (Neuromancer, Count Zero Interrupt, Mona Lisa Overdrive) by William Gibson is starting to look worryingly prescient.
I am trying to remember the name and author of the 70's sci-fi short story on the same topic with the two multi-nationals (one called "Goods and Services") both owned, unbeknownst to the public, by one guy.
Hmm, aren't they supposed to actually list the infringing files so that they may be removed? Sounds rather bogus to me...
Of course it doesn't apply. They're two totally different things.
--
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
It's fucking capatalist yuppies like you that screw everything up. If there were "magic photocopiers", and someone wanted to come and copy my kitchen table - sure, I'd say - why the hell not? Why the fuck should I care? As long as I still have the original, thats fine.
No profits = no company = no development = no jobs, I guess you might like a world where the government is the only option for self-survial, or perhaps you plan on working the land to live, and to hell with all this technology stuff, because, I mean who would pay for it anyways...
The point is, a new one shouldn't HAVE to. Let's repeal the DMCA....
Never understimate the power of human stupidity -Lazarus Long
"Then what exactly am I getting when I purchase music?" is a good question. there is no license involved. you don't license a book. what's different for an album? the music industry's implied claim of license is bogus, and we should all call shenannigans on the studios/labels. they're not happy about the fair-use thing. they imply that any copying of content is in violation of copyright. it's incredible. from the site:
http://www.riaa.com/Protect-Campaign-1.cfm
""Piracy" generally refers to the illegal duplication and distribution of sound recordings and includes four specific forms:
1)Pirate recordings are the unauthorized duplication of only the sound of legitimate recordings, as opposed to all the packaging, i.e. the original art, label, title, sequencing, combination of titles etc."
would that be an mp3? unreal.
Yeah fine, Gnutella has technical problems, but as you say, the RIAA will have an impossible task shutting it down in court. But then there are always alterenatives to Gnutella that have less technical problems. (Freenet, anyone?)
It ain't easy, but their path looks a heck of a lot like the Internet .com bubble. So I'd be happy to pick up the pieces when it bursts.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
It's about paying 20 bucks and STILL being responsible to the studios. I should have the right pay them in gift certificates for free 87 octane gasoline worth $20.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
I DO have that song on vinyl
And that's the important point. You bought that song. You paid for it. If the media on which it was stored disintegrates, it's within your rights to replace your copy. I'll be good godddamned if I'm going to pay $15-$20 for a bit of plastic, people. I pay that money for the music. The music is what's valuable to me, and the media on which it's written plays exactly the same role as the frame around the Boccioni print in my living room.
Ideology breeds Hypocrisy. Just how much is up to you.
Even with all those prices, thanks to the Napster like networks, i have discovered many Jpop and Jrock artists, and i have even buyed some of those overpriced discs. But the preview of the artists is what determined my intention. One good reason i would like to buy the CD, aside from giving a little aid to the artist (i know they wont get very much per CD sale) is the opportunity for me to make my own good rip and mp3 encoding, so that people can enjoy a truly good preview of the song.
For this, i use Lame of course ^^
Anyway my opinion is that the Riaa has a lot more to lose by going against this, instead of embracing it. They will never win the war, anyway, so it is very sad they are so obfuscared they still even attempt to fight it. Well, if the Napster with subscription thing takes off, i think they will essentialy become a riaa on the net. Anyone wanting to have presence, will need to register with napster first, otherwise they wont recieve money from downloads of their songs.
Well, if there were not that many free alternatives, that is. So now that Napster could became Riaa friendly, with all the control and encryption they plan to add to the songs (aka yet another propietary format) and subscription scheme including paying Riaa periodically, it could be now of their best interest (for RIAA) to target all the others, non Napster networks who will still use the Riaa so hated MP3 format.
In fact, i am suprised that MPAA is not involved too, since OpenNap servers allow more than mp3 content to be traded, like Mpeg video. I am sure they will, with the United Corporations of America laws with them, no one inside the US will be able to even think outside the Corporation s best interests.
--
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
New York (AP) - In an unexpected move today The New York Times shut down it's online newspaper website. "No one was reading it" said Mr. Blabberworthy, a New York Times Public Affairs representative. "The only visitor we've have since the end of Feb 2001 was someone with the username 12345678." When asked if the web site would ever be opened again in the future Mr. Blabberworthy replied "Probably not. I guess the web just isn't the 'in' thing it use to be. Sorry Mr. 12345678."
If you want to...
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Poliglut.org: 75 Million gun owners can't be wrong
The way I have decided to deal with this situation is to let them *choke* on their music, movies, et all. If they want to charge way to much for much to little, so be it. Do not expect the Supreme Court, the U.S. Government in general, or anyone else who earns a literal fortune off of this enterprise to worry about you in the least - until your money stays in your pocket, instead of flowing into theirs. Then they will take notice. An organized boycott? Nope. Each individual should just decide that paying too much is wrong. I think the money looks better in my pocket. I can live without what they sell. Can't you? If so, *keep* your money. If not, stop complaining, as you are literally paying for them to do as they please with you. 'Nuff said, me thinks.
Filetopia (based in spain) offers a similar system to Napster / open nap but with two important extra features 1 encryption .. 2 so called "bouncer proxies" these two things could go pretty far to spoil the riaa's picnic. pity it is still a proprietary solution although the do offer a linux client I believe.
It really bothers me that the judge pretends to see a difference between Sony and Napster, when really he just disagrees with the Sony decision. "...actual, specific knowledge of direct infringement..." - what junk! You think Sony didn't know that VCR's were being used for 'infringement'?
Well if Sealand were really working, that threat would be pretty remote. Sealand was intended to have multiple feeds from different providers. In addition, Sealand claims to be a sovereign country, a claim which has been accepted and rejected at different times by the British courts. They at least have a leg to stand on in defending their bandwidth.
Unfortunately, I haven't heard much about Sealand in the past year.
Actually Blockbuster and Hollywood video don't pay at all. They have profit sharing arrangements with all the studios, which is why they will get 10s of copies of new releases for free, rather than the couple that your mom & pop shops usually get.
Its called mp3.com ... only difference is the "interface" is a web browser. The p2p stuff is only hype.
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
until then, it's napster...
Well...ok, maybe I should have revised that: SC isn't that bribeable with money alone, which is what the RIAA would have tried. Money is not the only thing people value.
Ahh! Ayn Rand isn't dead!
What would life be without homegrown tomatoes?
Aye, sir. I hate to write a "Me, too" message, but I don't have any moderator points, and I want you to know that you're not the only one who's made that choice.
Proprietary, copyrighted data is more innovative and creative than free data? Hardly. The only case in software where this could be true is in games, and I could think of some good free games, too. For example, take a look at AisleRiot: 34 different kinds of solitaire. Freeciv is a wonderful civ for me, maybe you don't like it but I love it. These games are fairly new, and I expect to see a lot more good, free games. XPilot, for example.
The reason I don't respect proprietary, copyrighted software is because I've seen how much better free can be. Unless I see a good reason not to, I'll generalize this over to music. Now Microsoft becomes the RIAA, and neither get one whit of respect from me.
I love, admire, and respect creativity and innovation. However, Microsoft and the RIAA have *nothing* to do with either of those.
Copyright violation is *not* theft. Ever heard a lawyer call the two the same? There's a reason why not: by current law, copyright violation is illegal, but it is not theft.
For there to be theft, there would have to be some kind of property being stolen. No property is being stolen.
Allow me to quote TheCarp:
I call it a monopoly because the people who originally instituted it called it a monopoly. That is what copyright is!
Need I remind you that IP doesn't exist? Not in any legal sense. It really doesn't. What we are talking about is copyright.
Copyright, by its very definition, is a "limited monopoly" given to the creator of a work. It is given NOT because the author owns the work, or has some "god given right" to it, but to encourage people to produce art and other socially useful things. It is social contract by the people, with the authors saying "We will cede our rights to copy your works to you for a limited time".
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Their legal monopolyright is being violated, but nothing is being stolen from them. They claim they are losing "potential revenue." That's a sick laugh. Potential revenue cannot be stolen because *it isn't theirs yet.*
The members of the MPAA lost potential revenue from me when I decided they were all scumbags and I would not support them. I will not support the MPAA members in any way, shape, or form. Have I stolen anything from them? Hardly. I'm merely withholding money that I otherwise would have given them. Huge difference.
Btw, their legal monopolyright, some of us would argue, has no basis in right. Since most people in the US decide to grant monopolyright to "artists" and "inventors", it is the people's will that monopolyright be respected. If it becomes the will of the people that monopolyright not be respected, it will not be, whether that disrespect comes in the form of civil disobediance like Napster, creating art for the public domain like free software, or a constitutional amendment repealing copyright and patent law.
Copyright violation is not theft. It is not theft of potential revenue, since I'm never giving money to Microsoft, the RIAA, or the MPAA. It is not theft of data, because their copies still exist.
Tell me, oh wise gimpboy, what is being stolen?
"if ip doesnt exsist then what do you listen to? what do you read? what do you look at? what does your computer run? without ip the world would be a boring place, and advances in science in technology would have stopped at the blunt object used to kill dinner."
I don't think it's possible for us to understand each other.
"what it comes down to is this. the laws are screwed up. they need to be changed."
FWIW, I agree with you about that. I believe all "IP" should be in the public domain. That is, after all, the original purpose of copyright and patent law in the US: to make sure more art and science reached the public domain. It's not to reward artists and inventors, though that's an admirable goal. There are other ways to reward artists and inventors. Sacrificing the freedoms of the mass public for the benefit of intellectual "property" holders is abuse, even if the mass public agrees to it.
And even that they do now, in many places. Here in Canada, for example, we have an RIAA-imposed tax on all CD-Rs that can be used to record CD audio. Of course, the implication of this is that you can loan a CD or whatever to a friend, and they can legally burn it onto a CD-R they've paid the tax on and keep the recording.
-RickHunter
> >Please, don't make me come find you and vomit in your face. "Alot" is not a word. It's "A lot." Definite article "A", adjective "lot." Two words.
>As long as you're being all holier-than-thou about grammar, why not try looking up "lot" and discovering that it's a noun, not an adjective.
And the even funnier thing is that "A" isn't even a definite article. It's the indefinite article. :)
I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.
you have also gone too far. Now ALL your bases are belong to us!
Take this personaility test.
True, but DeCSS was a bit of code that could be written in to an HTML page--as the comments for it even, or a description of a file or anything and be unobtrusive. Plus when providing the DeCSS code your generally not providing the service and if requested to be removed its only a portion of the product that needs to be removed.
I know there are t-shirts and such with the DeCSS on it, but the scope of my comments here is web based. I think runnning an OpenNap server, and copying the DeCSS code is a little like comparing apples and oranges. Yes there is a shall we say massive corporate dislike of both, but copying the DeCSS code is relativly simple and can be spread so damn fast its not worth going after anymore. The other at the very least has centralized points to go after and be hurt far more quickly, plus there may not always be those brave people who want to run an OpenNap server, and are just lucky enough to have a nice machine to run it off on as well as a fast net connection.
Then again, this IS all just speculation and who knows, for the rest of time, when I fire up audioGnome or Napigator there may be servers for me to go to. Or in a year we may have forgotten about running our own servers, even if we have not forgotten how much we dislike the MPAA, and how much we do miss Napster and OpenNap.
"We're so tough we're made of nerf!" --D&D Character Tagline
oops.. dislike the MPAA should've been RIAA.. Its getting late and I didn't catch it even with two previews...
"We're so tough we're made of nerf!" --D&D Character Tagline
hey, napster is damn important in my book. why one day i might want to listen to a song or something and not have to pay for it. if only p2p options worked better. i don't know about you guys but i can't seem to get speeds faster than 10k/sec, or are accepting connections. not to jinx anything here, why hasn't anything happened to hotline? or irc?
100% Pure Evil With The Look And Feel Of Wholesome Goodness
When codermotor says "Art is not an endeavor in which one should expect to 'Earn a living'", "expect" is the operative verb. I create art, should I expect to be paid for it? NO, I have to convince others to pay me for it, the way it has always been and the way it is in every other business
But what you're missing is the fact that if you make aproduct that is worth paying for - ie people do want it because it is a good product, thus you can make a living off it, it is your right, then, to 'make a living off it'. But if you find out that you got paid for your first fruit, then someone else handed it around for free giving you nothing in return, how happy would you be? If you knew that that would be paying for your food, paying for your living, and you were getting no compensation, you'd be pretty depressed if not pissed.
Sure, don't expect to be paid, but expect to be paid if people are making good use of the product you are selling! Who are you to say that you can use my product without buying it from me, or compensating to some extent as a 'thank you'? It's the least you could do...
So I don't believe that startving artists who's works are generally adored, should be starving artists. They should see their own popularity, and 'expect' to make a living off it.
The OpenNap servers are only directories-- they don't contain illegal contents, just listings, so how can they be held accountable?
I think "reasonable" is the key word here. Have you been paying attention to the 2600 vs. MPAA case?
Stupid Cheap Guitars
Oh an insightful "all your base belong to us" comment! sheesh!
That just is not the case. If it was then please explain why it is legal for me to copy music for my friends and family and not steal duplicates of my car for them? IP IS NOT THE SAME AS PHSYICAL PROPERTY! You cannot make the comparison.
It seems that I'm one of the few people who really agree with your points. My standpoints:
- Music is fun, listening and producing
- Many artists have a second job for their income
- Artists *do* get paid when they perform, it might not be enough to make a living, but it covers the expense of instruments, travel and thelike
Many artists make music because they love music not because they want to earn a lot of money (and yes, music is something you can really love). And yes, this music can often be much better than their commercial counterparts.
But why do we hear nothing from these artists? Because they are completely overwhelmed by the commercial ones. They get a lot of budget, marketing and advertising. It is not because these artists are really good, it is because the mass record companies make them popular.
There is one very particular thing with music which you can find everywhere else: addiction. Record companies bombard us with music which "we should like". Yes, we get a choice, but only a choice from the commercially funded bands.
Oh, I can think of hundreds (not litteraly) other arguments on: "Kill the big record companies: it's good for music". If you want more, just ask on this thread.
Disclaimer: I play in a Jazzrock band and have seen many very non-commercial talented bands.
(sorry, there isn't really a line in this post, please draw one with a pencil)
This is a replacement signature.
The Bush Justice Dept. should investigate the record industry for pricefixing and other antitrust violations. This is because: 1. All evidence indicates they're guilty; and 2. They give lots of money to Democrats. Take it away, Mr. Ashcroft! PS: Check out the MPAA, too.
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
Idiots! You people will moderate up anything long and inflamatory! This is tripe:
Gee, what happens when people get so tired of this nonsense that they just quit going to movies, watching TV, buying music, etc?
Will that ever happen? The cynical say "Never". But, at this rate, such commercial "entertainment" (a term I use loosely, usually preceded by the word 'mindless') will, in the not-too-distant future be affordable only by those who own and control it.
Affordable only by those who own and control it? Have you been paying attention? Media is sold at the cost the market will bear. The corporations price the goods to fleece the market - us - of as much money as possible. You think that the media companies are going to abandon the mass market, to sell to some kind of elite? You do realize that there's a field called economics that covers this kind of things? Supply and demand? Disposable income? Any of those ring a bell?
Maybe it's time we revert to the practice of people producing art because they are compelled to, not because they are paid to. When artists are paid only on commission, or for a live performance. That is, they earn their living like the rest of us, based solely on the merit of their work - as judged by others.
Maybe you should stop saying it's time for things to happen that neither you or any other man can cause to come about. How are you going to cause this live preformance revolution? Lobby for laws banning recordable media? Start a religion proclaiming that recorded music is the path to hell? Become a culture nazi? If you don't like a product, don't buy it. Rip your tape deck out of your car and go to concerts every weekend. Why should everyone follow your path?
And don't anyone spout that tired old line about how no one will create without getting paid to do so. That would mean that no one, anywhere, ever created purely for the joy and satisfaction of seeing their imagination realized - not to mention such a theory invalidating the whole Free Software movement.
There's only one thing invalid here, and that's your incessant whining. Who the hell are you to dictate who gets paid for what?
Art is not an endeavor in which one should expect to "Earn a living". It is a gift which the artist willingly and lovingly shares with others. His expected reward comes from self-satisfaction, and, hopefully, the appreciation of his audience.
Let's make a list. You've dictated/mandated:
Congratulations. You've demonstrated that you are very good at demanding people live your way, by your standards. Have you considered running for congress or going to seminary? They've both got places for people like you.
Any artist who would give up his art because no one would pay for it, is most likely a very poor artist.
Or a fool.
Or they just disagree with you. Luckily, that's not a crime yet.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
They could easily dialup through, say.. a (insert dialup provider's name here) account and get a new dynamic IP. These people can't be THAT stupid. They must have at least one IT professional working for them. I'm sure they would get around that.
Ditto, Kalabajoui! I now watch 3 things on TV. Leno, Conan and the local news.
I used to be a die-hard Letterman fan, but I think he's just lost it..
Personally, if I like a band and want more bands like them to succeed,
I buy there album. If it's a one-hit wonder, fly-by-night band, I'll maybe
download a song, listen to it a few dozen times and toss it in the bit bucket.
But I think it's important to support bands you're really entertained by.
Except the video rentals pay this price once, per video tape, vs. paying over, and over and over and over again per movie per showing of each movie.
The cost they pay isn't that significant; you're talking about $100 a tape vs $20 in the stores. And the reason video stores buy 300 copies per store is so that it's in stock during the high initial demand, & then later they sell used copies when demand drops for a given film.
I remember several years ago the Church of Scientology were tricked into suing someone in Sweden, and discovered some interesting facts about the Swede's attitude to freedom of information.
So, does anyone know whether the Swedish parliament takes electronic submissions? And if so, can we send them all our MP3s
Idiot/Savant
The focus is still on shutting down search engines. Because all the search engines are centralized, which makes them an easy target. Would someone please release a distributed index? That would make the index harder to shut down than the content itself. Laws are being written wrong, all because of a simple technical problem!
I don't care about free music. But I do care about search engines. Search engines the greatest thing since sliced bread. I don't want them to go away.
"The Recording Industry Association of America, Inc. (RIAA) is a trade association whose member record companies produce, manufacture and
distribute approximately ninety (90) percent of all legitimate sound recordings sold in the United States."
Uh, doesn't that constitute a monopoly? Maybe the DOJ should look into the RIAA. Not only do they state the 90%, but they seem to be boasting.
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
When artists are paid only on commission, or for a live performance. That is, they earn their living like the rest of us, based solely on the merit of their work - as judged by others.
Note that phrase, people: he hasn't said that artists don't deserve to earn money. He's talking about a different existence for the artist, differently configured from the way it is today under the hammerlock of the labels, configured in a way that allows artists to be more in touch with the generosity and spontaneity which is at the essence of their work ("willingly and lovingly shares with others"). All your criticisms make two points: that the artist has a right to earn money, and that implicitly the artist won't have this right under a system other than the studio/label system. So some pointed replies:
Firstly: you people outraged at the thought that artists don't have the right to earn money for their art? artists DON'T have the right to be paid for what they do, just as the garbageman doesn't have the right to be paid to take out the garbage. The garbageman has to show that he's good at taking out the garbage, every time he does it, or -- he gets fired. Artists, and creators of intellectual property in general, *do* have the right to prevent *you* from earning any money from their work, under certain circumstances. The gist of the law (IANAL) is that they have the right to the first fruits of their work; but they do not have the right to create demand for their work, that is, to create those fruits, by manipulation of the market (listening, RIAA and labels?), and they basically don't have the right to earn anything if no one will pay them. When codermotor says "Art is not an endeavor in which one should expect to 'Earn a living'", "expect" is the operative verb. I create art, should I expect to be paid for it? NO, I have to convince others to pay me for it, the way it has always been and the way it is in every other business. So let's drop the "right" to be paid BS.
Secondly: obviously creating art/other intellectual work is not divorced from the need for bread. Without the bread they earned, musicians like Bach wouldn't have gotten very far. Mozart is one example of someone who died early because he couldn't earn his bread, though not too early luckily for us. But all you people attacking this guy for his rose-colored glasses implicitly support the current system of paying artists, which is through the labels and studios, and which you will agree is a manipulative system, unless you're living under a rock. Not only do artists not strictly have a right to be paid for their work, they also don't have a right to be paid in any specific way. You're right, art IS a business, but your criticisms that artists deserve to be paid is just a variation on the "no one will create without payment" line, which is TOTAL bull. "No one will create without payment" is another way of saying "GOD, what will we do withouts those studios and labels? I mean, they PAY us!" Artists have always been wheeler-dealers; they will seek out other ways to be paid for what they do, or MAKE their own opportunities for payment, BECAUSE they love their art and it is what they want to do with their lives.
Having said that, the statement about being a "poor artist" is basically true. Anyone who gives up an art or other creative endeavor because there's no money in it is clearly not motivated by the art; they're motivated by the money. Regardless of how much talent they have, that makes that person a poor artist - in attitude and vision, important elements in creativity.
someone please pass the ketchup (or catsup) to go with my foot?BR>
Next thing the RIAA should do, is shut down all IRC networks, and then once that is done, they should really just shut down the whole internet, most of its full of illigal anyway right?
wait.. I thought creativity was legal last time I checked, I guess I better check again.
Klowner
where was the RIAA when I was copying songs off the radio when I was 8 years old?
Shutting down OpenNAP servers is just pointless. I've got the right (or, at least -- here in Poland) to print names of my favourite songs on my t-shirt. Why can't i print them on my computer, in a -- sort of -- file, that is available for public?
OpenNAP is something like printing names of bands on t-shirts: I am showing the world what I own, or what I like, or whatever I want -- and I don't violate copyright just because of that. OpenNAP only shares some information, not songs -- that's why I believe RIAA has got no right to shut down servers.
Or, maybe we'll shut down google for "warez windows me download" or "naked teens having fun free"?
Plain old sigh.
This is a misguided comparison. If I steal an SUV, the dealer can prove loss by showing that the SUV is missing. There is no way to prove loss in this sense. I am not saying that downloading copyrighted music is not illegal, just that your comparison is troll bait at best...
Well, the first shot is fired against Opennap.
People are not going to give up and this is going to cause some serious innovation.
Gnutella is a great idea, but in my opinion, it doesn't scale like Opennap which I even find better than Napster!
If they shut this down, what replaces it will be unstoppable. I'm don't advocate piracy, but with the technology today, really it seems impossible to stop this peer-to-peer file sharing.
This is a war that I'm sure they'll lose.
That's what warez sites are for. ;) They've been doing this long before Napster, and they'll be doing this long after Napster. ;)
Ever lovable and always scrappy,
Ever lovable and always scrappy,
kawaii
The quote is said by JFK, during his inaugral speech, I believe. =)
Ever lovable and always scrappy,
Ever lovable and always scrappy,
kawaii
Maybe this wasn't obvious -- I am an artist as a hobby only. I do not now and never have made money off this. That's because as I started my musical career I encountered the parasitical slime who inhabit the industry and decided that I would rather kill myself than sell my soul to those kinds of people. The guys who stuck with it (I've kept in touch) ended up with quite the raw end of the stick almost every time.
PLEASE advise me where. I have no idea that the cost have gotten that low. Last I knew, it was in the .70's to .90's in 500,000 volumes for the duplication and packaging.
I can make Cd's for less than 50 cents in my house. It costs me about $3 to print the cover because of the ink costs. But I got my information from a friend who still records and performs (classical music, not rock) professionally from time to time. If he was exaggerating that's my bad. But it seems reasonable that the economies of scale win out there. Ten years ago it was about three dollars a unit -- printing and packaging. That's the last time I encountered the real cost of CD reproduction.
I think that Artist in general need to become aware that they need proper legal representation when they are greeted by the Record Companyies. Too many time I see artist in general give it all up just to get that break. Also artist need to understand that Music ( if made for profiting ) must be looked at as a business, and as a business it should be handled with everything reviewed by a lawyer.
I agree here. The artist, however, usually doesn't have the resources, or the savvy, to actually go this route. When I was doing this for real, I think I made about $40 a week, if that. Most of the time the money went right back into the band. I delivered pizzas to feed myself. Most bands seem to be highly self-destructive units. The people can't get along, they don't share the same priorities, they don't really even know what it is they're after. The music industry finds young kids, promises them huge financial rewards, and screws them with legalese. The musicians realize they're trapped in a hole, and frequently destroy themselves with drugs. That's why as an artist now I am trying just to get my art out to people without the financial need for making money. I produce about as much new music per year as a working band. I definitely would like to play more. Keeping a band of hobbyists together is a nightmare. Most of the time I end up just overdubbing the parts myself. I give my CD's away, almost all the time. But I count myself lucker than the ones who continued on. I have a job a family a house and a career, and I still get to have my music. Online distribution offers me a means to actually get an audience, if I can just find a good means of distribution. But I'm deliberately staying away from Napster because of the destructive fallout, and it's pissing me off. I shouldn't have to worry that I'll find myself in some lawsuit or find lawyers sending threatening letters to my email address for putting my own music online. But frankly that's what I expect to happen in this climate. So I'm waiting until the hysteria dies down, and in the meantime continuing to do what I've always done -- record the music for my own personal edification and enjoyment.
i know for a cold hard fact that this goes on in South America, ask any Venezuelan where his/her nice new car went after it got stolen... can you say 'Colombia'? ...i knew you could
Art is not an endeavor in which one should expect to "Earn a living". It is a gift which the artist willingly and lovingly shares with others. His expected reward comes from self-satisfaction, and, hopefully, the appreciation of his audience. Any artist who would give up his art because no one would pay for it, is most likely a very poor artist.
Computer science is a gift which the artist willing and lovingly shares with others. His expected reward comes from self-satisfaction, and, hopefully, the appreciation of his audience. Any programmer who does not program Open Source is most likely a very poor programmer!
Are you trying to say that most artists aren't starving? Try tell that to many of the artists I see in downtown Toronto. While there is a filming boom, the vast majority are not rich and well off. That include music artists. My objection is to the fact that he wants artists to give up their monetary pursuits. Artists that pursue the big bucks are suddenly not artists! That's like saying people who program for money are not real programmers!
So what if they shut down OpenNap (and as the article points out, overseas servers are going to make that a difficult proposition)?
Simple. As the article mentioned, they're going after ISPs that house OpenNap servers. So what'll stop them from going to the border router admins that route overseas links, and ordering them to drop the packets that match OpenNap/Napster/Gnutella/Whatever? Right. Nothing.
If they're going to go after the source of the problem (in their eyes), they'll just as easily cut off your access to it if they can't reach it themselves.
Three dits, four dits, two dits, dah!
Radio, radio, rah rah rah!
If there were "magic photocopiers", and someone wanted to come and copy my kitchen table - sure, I'd say - why the hell not? Why the fuck should I care?
As long as I still have the original, thats fine.
And goddamit - when the fuck did music become centralized around money. The REAL artists are those who don't do it for the money - like the hundreds of garage bands etc... Not brittney big-tits spears.
Its late, I'm pissed, Gnight
I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Fuck brittney spears - wonder if guys have to suck dick to make it big time in the music industry too? Or maybe they just toss salads -
I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Damn dude(ette), haven't you ever written any code just for the hell of it - or written a story because you just feel like it? or put a circut board together because you wanted to?
Since when was the desire to innovate simply enough to do so? Einstein didn't put together his ideas for monetary gain, nor did Newton, Mozart, Michelangelo et cetera...
Sure, they may of have "sold" their works after the fact, but the drive was not for the money.
I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
capitalism is the perfect system: You work hard, you get the good things in life. You are lazy, you get nothing. It's not about enslaving anyone. in a society like yours, what the hell is the point of working for anything (the government will just provide me with it). That's why you see so many people in the big metropolitan areas of the states begging for money/not working (welefare). This is also why people over in canada come over to the united states when they need any kind of hospital care.
DO you really believe that garbage?
I am in no way "fooled" into my opinion. I am comparing the facts.
Tell me a system that's better, and show me facts.
I wish disease was expunged from the earth, and there was world peace.
And a piece of the pie for everyone
what a naive look at things.
Even the freedom to be a slave, if that is what you want. And a piece of the pie for everyone.
And how would you like to divide this "pie". Who divide it?
If you look at the world today, the country that is most free will have the most power. Here in the United States, I have freedom. But like everything, there are consequnces (is that would you want? All actions with no Consequences? Even GOD is against such actions). I have the freedom to kill someone, but...I will go to Prison. I also have the Freedom to start a company, or work for someone, or choose not to work, but I will then be forced to live on the streets.
You're comments are actually pretty comical. Without the Freedoms of the United States, the Internet would not have been invented.
Free market, free determination, free knowledge. What about my freedoms? to
1) Charge $$$ for something
2) withold information (including Knowledge).
What you want is only in the best interest of one person, YOU.
Capitalism isn't perfect, but look at everything we have thus so far......it's amazing how well it actually works. Without the ideals of capitalism, most people would not have the drive to come out with technical advances, quickly.
Im not a slave, you are just bitter at a society you seem to have failed in. Bringing everyone down to your level won't make things any better.
Speaking of the silliness of the New York Times, if you read the post-script to the article above, youi'll find this tidbit:
While I guess I have to give the writer points for admitting his own mistakes, I find it disturbing that a person writing about Napster in the New York Times wouldn't have bothered to learn how it works in the first place. If you were a non-technical person writing a column about Napster, wouldn't it occur to you to at least try it out? Even once? Just to see how it works? Especially given that you can do so for free?
With such tireless dedication to reporting the facts to the public, it's no wonder intellectual property laws are in such a poor state.
C'mon, you don't need to make threats. The RIAA can just get Dubya to send your young men out to bomb them :)
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Some software engineers, a.k.a. hackers, do that.
:)
Most software engineering, however, though it might be pleasant, is not art and is not done for the love of it. I'm talking about coding business logic in VB and stuff like that. Yes, there might be a feeling of satisfaction once you've released version 98 of your Fortune 500 company's mission critical workflow application, but you didn't do it to express yourself creatively
Free software developers express themselves creatively. They express their:
- joy of programming
- philosophy about freedom
- aesthetism
- fellowship with their fellow (wo)men
And whatever else tickles an individual's fancy.
My point is, I wouldn't want to pay for anything less. The beauty is, free software developers do not *require me to pay*. They do it anyway.
Of course, most have a day job which pays the bills.
Now, replace 'free software developers' with 'artists'.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
No it's not; being a programmer is not the same as being an artist. This is the whole point here, artists are not like other workers. When they are, it devalues their work.
Some programmers are artists too; we call them 'hackers' or 'free software developers'.
Look at Linus, though he demands he is 'just' an engineer, I think he is being modest. He has said he didn't do Linux for fame and fortune.
He did it, initially, for his own use. But I don't think that would stand up to much scrutiny nowadays, I don't think Linus needs all the features of Linux. He could probably have stopped a few years ago and been quite happy with the result were that the case. The only way I could understand his continuing is because he is enjoying himself.
We really need to define what Art is here, and I would say that Art is the creative things we do for the sake of doing them - ars gratia artis.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Is that why you wrote a long and inflammatory post?
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Does anyone know if RIAA is contracting with some firm to search for OpenNap servers?
If so, blocking the ip blocks of RIAA agents would make it difficult, if not impossible, to prove that you are violating the law.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
...it said Gnutella VIOLATED.
(which may end up being more accurate in the long run w/greater influx of users)
e.
www.randomdrivel.com -- All that is NOT fit to link to
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
My currently registered ID is fuckmarketers/fuckthemall, and everybody's welcome to use it.
Bugrit! Millenium hand and shrimp!
Not "fuck the mall," it's "fuck them all." I have nothing in particular against malls (though I do avoid them when possible).
Bugrit! Millenium hand and shrimp!
No its not the same, because music isn't licensed . Try calling Sony the next time your Bob Dylan album starts skipping halfway through Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.
My handle breaks slashcode, what does your handle do?
The "war" as you put it isn't over. People will always find a way to get what they want and business will always find a way to provide it in terms that they can accept in order to make a profit. In time, the record labels will realize that the existence of P2P, IRC, & USENet file sharing is not enforcible. Furthermore, they'll begin to understand that most people who download tracks from their [the record companies] CDs will eventually purchase music based on what they've heard. Markets are currently opening up that never existed before simply because of this... if you look at record company earnings in the last few years (admittedly, I have not), I bet you'll find that their is an increase in profits... not a decrease.
I think I speak for the vast majority of /. users when I say that I don't want to hurt the music industry... by theft or boycott (grin). I do hope your "letters to the powers that be" had less vulgarity in them than your post here so they'll take you seriously. ;-)
cfeagans
1)Record labels would demand some sort of action by ICQ to attempt to prevent this;
2)ICQ has been a bit unstable lately (IMHO) - this sort of bandwidth use might put it over the edge
Though, most of the problems I've noticed with ICQ lately have been with searching their user databases. This is a shame, because it would seem that if you could install a plugin that would allow another ICQ user to access a specified directory with/without a password, you could use the ICQ database to store a short list containing a genres or albums in the user details.
IMHO there are no "bad guys" in the so-called Napster Wars... just folks looking for fairness. I think its fair that the record labels make a tidy profit, I also think its fair that one can share music via the internet. I don't see how the music industry can be damaged by this. Even with DSL, my bandwidth is too limited to trade more than a few songs a day. Even though I've a 30 gig harddrive, I'd rather have a collection of CD's. Most of the music in MP3 format on my harddrive is from CD's that I own. Several of these CD's were purchased based upon MP3 files that I aquired through the net. Carlos Santana's Supernatural, for instance.
I think the question of sharing MP3 files is one that will slowly become quiet, especially as record labels discover how futile it is to regulate and as "pirateers" discover the advantage of not advertising their activities in the open. Look at the "Warez" situation. EVERYone knows that if you want a particular software title, you only need to visit the right IRC channel or alt.binaries.warez.* in UseNet and be patient. Sure... folks get into trouble all the time. I've no doubt that certain software companies are monitoring these same places, but they don't make their activities very public since this would make matters worse. Both sides understand the importance of discretion and privacy.
Sorry... didn't mean to ramble ;-)
cfeagans
maybe this has been talked about before, but what about moving napster/etc to a place like Sealand,an island off the british coast that has claimed it's own independence since 1967. A company called HavenCo plans to host colocation services there.
may be a longshot, but you never know
--
Thing is, Napster _servers_ don't distribute any mp3 files. They list 'em, they provide access to them, but according to the strictest def'n, they don't distribut jack
At this point, it doesn't warrant dying for it. However, the gradual erosion of our rights has been happening for quite sometime and doesn't show any signs of stopping. There will likely come a time. Maybe not in my lifetime, but in my children's or grandchildren's where it gets to the point where our rights are taken away to the point where it becomes intolerable. If that time comes in my life then I will fight that battle even unto the death.
It's time to organize a boycott. Don't purchase any music. If we all do this together we can get them in thier pocketbooks.
yeah i had a similar problem. it was with a new car. they wanted 35k for that suv. i said to myself "self, they are trying to screw you... it's ok to just steal it". since they were going to try to charge me too much, self and i decided to steal the car.
this tired analogie again?
Let's try again:
Rather than just take the SUV, I'll copy it exactly, for no intrinsic cost. The dealer won't have my money, but at least he still has his SUV. Now that was easy, wasn't it? Hey, I'll just give a copy to my friend, he likes SUV's, and my mom while I'm at it. I mean, gosh, it's so easy, I'll see if my neighbor wants one too. How much did you say it was worth? 35k? you have got to be kidding me. These things are a dime a dozen! anybody else want an SUV?
Now I'm not saying the artists shoudn't be payed for their work, but times are changing folks. What we're seeing from the RIAA and MPAA is desperate measures to make their old business models work in a new world. They will fail eventually; I just hope we don't suffer to much until they do.
I just tried some bogus userid/password combinations. After 3 trials I found one:
user=12345678
password=12345678
Enjoy!
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
A beta version of the client is expected soon.
Still, with a plan, you only get the best you can imagine. I'd always hoped for something better than that. -CP
okay heres the thing I read on scour.com that they are going to be up and running again and for all of you that know about it its a p2p like napster except that it serves movies and pictures. Now it has been deamed leagal and there working out the fine print as it seems it will stay free too! now how about that. So why is napster getting so cut and beat up over this if other p2p wether runny though a main machein or off of every one.
Or am I crazy once again.
Hell if I'm gonna spell check. I don't even know were I am half the time...
Argh. I was wondering why all the OpenNap servers were down. Guess I'll have to find another network. When I update the list there are like 40 of the freakin things. Where did all these lame networks come from?
Real easy to say when it's not your servers on the line.
My comment was moderated as "+1 Funny", but it's actually the truth. My DSL was cut when I came from school on Wednesday, and I've called and emailed my ISP several times, and haven't got anything more than "I don't know" or "I'm not allowed to tell you". It's really beginning to piss me off, cause I want to download the new linux kernel, and this 33.6 connection won't work to well for downloading it!
-mdek.net
If the RIAA wins in getting ISPs to block access to OpenNAP and other Napster like services, it will set an absolutly disguesting president on what ISPs can, and are expected to do, that will very quickly effect our ability to do what we want online. I mean what will be next? IRC? Pr0n sites? Binary newsgroups? Where will it end? The purpose of an ISP is to give people and business access to the Internet, not to police the services availble through them. The RIAAs attack on Napster was bad enough, but if they get away with this, it could be the beginning, of the end of the Internet as we know it.
...was written by someone named Carl S. Kaplan? I wonder if there's any relation to the Kaplan that ruled against 2600 in the DeCSS case?
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
http://archives.nytimes.com/2001/02/23/technology/ 23CYBERLAW.html
I don't know why they insist on a registration system if there are tons of loopholes.
In general, modern problems have medieval solutions...
So, I should just toss my morals in the trash just because the government disagrees with me?
I don't think so. I will not change my opinion based on the the ill-thought out opinions of others. Now, you might be trying to say that it is "legally" defined as theft; and if this is what you're saying, then this might very well be so. But the morality of it all is another matter.
-- juju
You are right, none of us individually can really handle any sort of legal hassle. We're techies. We'll do what we do best: create alternative software solutions to the problem. Now that we're actually combining our efforts and knowledge through the open-source model(sharing information, like any good science), we'll be much more effective at at what we do best.
To quote the mentor: You may stop this individual, but you cannot stop us all.
-- juju
Let's be sure we know what we are fighting for first. On the one hand, mp3s are not a right, they are a privilage. Noone ever died because they had to shell out $20 for a CD (if someone has, they have really messed up priorities). On the other hand, this reasoning just leads us down a slippery slope. After all, free speech is not essential for life (in the strictest biochemical sense.) So does mean that the government and/or companies should have the power to limit speech? I don't think so. We need to draw the line somewhere. I think many(most?) Slashdotters would say that free speech is a good cause to die for, but mp3s aren't. I agree that there is a possible threat, and that it will become more and more likely as time goes on.
The sad thing is that future generations will just accept the lack of freedoms as normal. For example, we know the other side of the RIAA's "copying is stealing" argument. But the next generation of US citizens will just see what they are taught in school. I'm willing to bet my entire stash of mp3s that it will read something like this:
"The Internet was a terrible idea invented in the 1980s. It allowed exchange of information without restriction. The great corporations of America did their civic duties to rid the world of this evil influence. For example, in February 2001, the RIAA began a massive effort to get rid of EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL music pirates and bring order to the Internet. Thanks to their efforts, we can now legally enjoy the best music in the world for only $100 a song! (insert picture of Brittany Spears here). Another great example is the heroic efforts of N2H2, Inc. to tame the Internet. N2H2 made their software available to schools for only a small fee, allowing the schools to keep their students safe from the evil unprotected Internet, while at the same time delivering valuable advertisements to those same students."
Which point of view do you think schools will teach, the one backed by a few computer nerds, or the view that has the support of the RIAA, MPAA, etc? Schools have not been impartial on anything for a LONG time. This kind of brainwashing already goes on, and will only speed up if the billion-dollar corporations have it in their best interests. Without any standard to compare their own lives to, people always think they are living the best life possible.
It still blows my mind that people insist that the only use for Napster is illegal purposes. It seems to me that there are two perfectly legal and legit uses for the service.
- Downloading music that isn't copyrighted
or
- Downloading music that you ALREADY OWN ON CD
Its the second point that in my opinion is the bigger of the two. Say i own every Metallica (ugh, but for the sake of example) CD available, but i'd like to listen to some of the songs on my PC. Its perfectly legal under fair use to format shift those cd's to mp3's, if for personal use. AND, on a fast connection, i can download songs faster than i can rip them from cd.
Now, my other gripe is that from Napster's point of view, they can only see whats being searched for. They can neither tell if the music is indeed being downloaded at all, nor tell if the person downloading owns a legitimate copy of the music, or if the music is copyrighted at all.
Seems to me that napster should be protected as is every other search engine on the planet.
Whatever though...
dusty
dusty
Kalle Lasn is the editor for Adbusters magazine - another counter-culture mag with stories and insights you definitely will not find in the mainstream media.
-------
We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
acutally it was said by some greek philosopher, like plato or someone.
Some record companies do help the artists, most do not. All of the ones in the RIAA don't. If you search back slashdot articales you can find a link to an article about how much an artist really makes from 95% of the record companies. The tours don't help much unless they are huge becuse they have to pay back the 'loan' the company gave them for the tour. Of course the bands get to keep the stuff they buy with the allowence. If they don't sell enough cds to equal the allowence they have to put out another cd to pay off the debt
Let's take a quick look at your arguements, shall we?
Your starving student arguement has one glaring flaw: most are. Unless you were born into to money, you have to work damned hard to get through college, and you DO NOT GET PAID A DIME the entire time you are there. 4 years or more of work, NO monetary compensation. Those who have plenty of money do it one of two ways, both of which apply to any artist. Frist, they are simply born into a wealthy family. Second, they have to work outside of classes in order to support themselves, and often pay for their very education.
Ok, on to your false assumption that all artists would stare if they didn't get megabucks from CD's etc. etc. One, see above methods for surviving through a hardship till you make your name. Two, they at least can get paid to play small venues, while they are still learning even, which while not much, is more than any college student will ever be paid, so that puts them ahead, doesn't it?
I'm not sure I can argue with your last statement, as, even though you meant it tongue in cheek, I find it rather true none the less, with the addendum that the contributution be useful. If you code something useful for, say , Linux. A patch that fixes the kernel on something obscure like an old Cyrix chip, say, you ought to send it out to be incorporated into the main body of work. After all, hundreds of folks created and gave to you that which you now use to create further, so its only fair to continue the cycle.
-={(Astynax)}=-
-={(Astynax)}=-
"Darkness beyond Twilight"
The vast majority of those 30 million Americans are not determined Napster users. They are just people enjoying donwloading new music. If some Napster/Openap user gets in trouble with the law they will be so scared of getting in trouble themselves that they will stop using Napster.
Right now I don't really see any real way for Napster/Openap to continue in the same way once people will atart getting arrested/fined etc.
BTW, I started buying/discovering MORE music after Napster. Although that might not have been so if I had been into chart type music.
Can someone either cache, post, or find another loophole to that NYT story? The suspense is killing me!
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
And what's with mojonation and other systems? What is really forbidden? If I share pr0n movies - is it OK? If I share classic games is it ok? If I share free mp3 - how can anybody check if it's really free?
Will they do something if we will _use_ systems like gnutella/mojonation, or if we share their music? And how they will check what we are doing in mojonation?
I hope at least they won't ban ftp...
Punk? Shoved in the same category as teen pop? Punk is about rebelling from the norm (I know, you know some "punks" who are jackasses/idiots/the same as preps... great). Punk idealizes the very same ideas you are writing about. Punk is about not taking shit, doing what you want... freedom. Maybe some kids at your high school like punk rock and dye their hair. But don't lump them with general punk. I mean, the punks I hang out with don't like the corporate propaganda either. Maybe some "punks" idealize some rock stars and imitate them, but they aren't swallowing this teen pop/ conformity stuff.
The point is, the punks are the radicals, the ones who want change, the ones who aren't afraid to stand out (even if some choose to act like each other). Just because the punks like popular music doesn't mean they should be lumped with all the other teenie-boppers. I suggest you learn about Jello Biafra (former singer for Dead Kennedys). He's got tons of bad crap happen to him, including Gore's war against him in the name of "morality" ("concerned parents"), running for Mayor of San Fransico after Harvery Milk was murdered (Dan White gives the famous Twinkie defense and gets off)... With what you had said in the beginning, I thought you WERE a punk, since what you were saying was so close the the punk ideals.
And another thing: Aren't these "teenie boppers" the ones downloading the RIAA music, NOT the punks? I mean, most punk bands encourage you to download their stuff off Napster.
The radio station pays rolyalty to the record company, that's the difference. thanks for playing.
Actually, in the US, they don't pay royalties. It's different in most other countries though, but not in the US. I've actually heard this directly from the "source" (RIAA) on a TV show back in October.
Call it nitpicking, but as far as I know there is no law against sharing popular music unless it is done without the legitimate copyright holders consent. That is why the RIAA trying to shut down and subvert or charge a toll for all peer to peer networking is evil and un-American.
( P.S. I think that should answer your question about prior art :) )
AC comments get piped to
Also proves my point; RIAA relies on others to make money - ultimately will be their downfall.
Oh well, another service I won't use on the principal that I don't want to do anything that will generate revenue for Rich Imbecile Assholes of America
AC comments get piped to
Simple as that. Move the napster servers to countries which dont give a damn about the RIAA and lawsuits. We'll be on them. You can't win. Just like warez-sites, they will always exist in one fashion or another. Sure napsters' time will come and we'll be forced back to smaller scale music sharing, but this will only make us work harder to get what we want. And we will spite the RIAA even more.
===sam=== free nessus vulnerability scan = www.vulnerabilities.org
use something like gnutella in a peer to peer fashing to locate irc bouncers which will point you to the rogue opennap servers.. combination of technology could make the servers exist in anonyminity.(sp)
===sam=== free nessus vulnerability scan = www.vulnerabilities.org
I'm just tired of hearing about Napster, to be honest. I think the simple fact is that people can't band together cohesively enough to put pressure on such industries to change their ways. I think a six month strike on purchasing cdroms or any type of music from major labels (and minor) would pretty much be the pressure they need. Unfortunately, it can't be done. &J
Copyright is dead, Long live Copyright!
very true, one other thing is only one of the cease&desist letters they've sent lists copyright infringement (the one to MusicCity, because they have lawyers that will fight back).. every other cease&desist letter uses the 9th thingies Napster case as an excuse, the thing is they prooved Napster was copyright infringing, they are just ASSUMING all the opennap servers are, this means nothing in court without proof that the opennap servers contain infringing material, they are just too lazy to go through them all gathering evidence. Also if they want to use the Napster decision as an excuse, Napster was told to block copyrighted material.. how come the opennap servers aren't given this chance? the opennap software contains the ability to filter, it even has regular expression support. They are abusing their power with scare tactics and they know it by sending ONLY MusicCity a screenshot listing 20 infringing titles and told them to remove them and sending everyone else orders to shut down because they know they can't afford lawyers to check the legality of it all.
Lawman - Listen msiter, I heard that you've been having pirated mp3s on your servers, I order you to remove them
:-)
Me - huh? hey buddy they ain't pirated. They are mp3s from CDs I paid for. you see I travel a lot, so I need to access my music stuff where ever I go. So I just uploaded 'em. got a problem?
Lawman - oh! but it's not just you, everybody else can access those too.... you gotta stop that!
Me - Oh yeah, actually I had a private url to that. Now with the stupid patent on that thanks to you dumb lawyers, even that's impossible. don't wanna get sued dude.... got a better idea?
You see people, it's *their* fault.. as I've always said
"...Fear the people who fear your computer"
Yeah in India cyber laws have been drafted almost copy cat style as in US, probably by dumber people. Plus, the political clout that US wields is too much on third world countries in general. What about aids? And sanctions? And exports/imports?
One more thing, there for you guys, the cops might actually come and put you in, and let you have a lawyer. Hey, here they just come, shoot you and go away.
You,uh, kind of cease to exist. Get that? Ain't that simple pal. Wish it were, though.
"...Fear the people who fear your computer"
Ok, im not too familiar with the details of DMCA, but why do ISPs have to listen to a letter from RIAA? No judge has decided whether or not the servers in question did actually have copyrighted material on them. They are just assuming that RIAA is right. Are these letters just a threat of possible legal action because no one has verified their clames. Has anyone challenged RIAAs authority to demand ISPs to shut servers down? It seems to me that the orders to shut down servers should come from the courts, not the corporations.
then to me is seems the argument could be made that copyrights are a lot like software licenses. If I own 10 licenses for Mac OS 9, I don't have to use all ten CD's to install it. I can use one CD, since there is no license number, to install ten copies. Therefore, [begin logic-stretching sequence now] I believe that when I bought Graceland on Cassette in like 1987, that gave me the license to listen to the data contained within as I wish, including grabbing CD quality versions from Napster. If this is not the case, then perhaps we are not paying for a user license at all, rather we are paying for the media it's printed on. In that case, then since there is no stolen media involved when I use napster, it's all cool.
Maybe I just used up all my logic resources this week already, too. (Score: -2, burned-out)
Just then the floating disembodied head of Colonel Sanders started yelling Everything You Know Is Wrong!-Weird Al
The District Court concluded that noncommercial home use recording of material broadcast over the public airwaves was a fair use of copyrighted works and did not constitute copyright infringement. It emphasized the fact that the material was broadcast free to the public at large, the noncommercial character of the use, and the private character of the activity conducted entirely within the home. Moreover, the court found that the purpose of this use served the public interest in increasing access to television programming, an interest that "is consistent with the First Amendment policy of providing the fullest possible access to information through the public airwaves
So on one hand we take television broadcasts. It's legal to record these things, so long as they are used for private showings.
What about video rentals? Do those shops pay an IP licencing fee (beyond the purchace of the actual movie)?
. We have in the other hand the radio. A smiliar method of broadcasting data over the airwaves. We record it on tapes (the difference between a CD and a Tape being irrelevant in this case). It is legal for me to tape songs off the radio to listen to them. It is legal for me to tape songs for my friends. But if I obtain the same data, for the same price (free) over the internet its suddenly illegal?
So we have an extant model allowing the copying of broadcast materials (netcast ~ broadcast). And we have a model allowing the distribution of copyright material FOR PROFIT by a corporation (probably without paying any fees).
Honestly, I don't understand why the rulings have been going against Napster.
This has been another useless post from....
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
The same can be said of Napster (just a directory), since these OpenNaps are just non-commercial Napster clones. If Napster is illegal, and the courts have essentially said it is, then so are these OpenNap servers.
"capitalism is the perfect system"
There are few things more pathetic than a well-to-do slave who preaches to others about the virtue of work or a slave who has been fooled into thinking he's free.
>DO you really believe that garbage?
You can call it garbage if you want but it's the truth.
>I am in no way "fooled" into my opinion. I am
>comparing the facts.
You are so deluded it's not even funny.
>Tell me a system that's better, and show me
>facts.
I did. You're too deluded to listen and the sad part is that you like it that way. I'll say it for the few who will listen. We need a truly free system. Free market, free determination, free knowledge. Even the freedom to be a slave, if that is what you want. And a piece of the pie for everyone. The fewer fascist laws, the better. The land does not belong to anyone that we should be buying it and selling it. It should be divided for an inheritance. And we should leave it for our children and our children's children so that they, too, can enjoy it.
Like I said, the internet and digital communication techonologies are the first kinks in the armor. The system will crash. Hard. And the fools will crash with it. Now go back and be a good little slave.
In any other sphere, this would be plain and simple theft. Because a computer is involved, it somehow is a 'human rights issue' ?
Perhaps the 'Your rights online' topic should be renamed 'Your criminal behavior is not defensible' I mean, Slashdot should show some leadership and responsibility here. Many slashdot readers are quite young and easily influenced by what they read here. A few words from slashdot coming down firmly on the side of law and order could give them some very useful moral guidance.
In the meantime, I just hope the RIAA gets some real muscle to prosecute these theives and send a message to all 'slackers' 'crackers' and 'hackers' that theft is theft, no matter what technology you use to perpetrate it.
Hey! I've got an idea! Let's trade Napster to Australia for some R rated content! Then we can listen to our MP3's, they can see Joe Cartoon, and the world is a better place to live. Whaddaya think?
Random Musings
Bearshare run on Gnutella kode are whatever that is (I'm not technical) And I haven't had any trouble getting the songs I wanted, and it doesn't require a huge amount of skill to operate.
And offcource there is the little thing about sharing everything like movies and stuff, Napster can't do that unless you use wrapigator
This would be true if the data were encrypted, as with CSS. However, watermarks are not encryption. Watermarks are just an identifying mark on the music which is difficult to remove and doesn't affect the sound quality too much. They are not inherently insecure, but designing a highly secure watermark system with minimal loss to sound quality is not an easy problem.
Don't underestimate the power of the greedy-they are well fed, well armed, insured, and have virtually unlimited resources compared to the average joe (victim). And we continue to work for them... anyone see the gradual erosion of personal rights to the corporate machinery ? anyone willing to die fighting it anymore?
you think it's easy, but you're wrong...
Oh, and one other thing that I hate: spelling "you're" as "your". You're is short for you are, while your is the adjective possessive form of you. Evidently a complicated concept for some people. I want to kill the a-hole who went and made a post with this error in it, to which about fifty people replied (including my own stupid self). Seeing it once is bad enough... "Doesn't matter your wrong" is not a sentence! Try "Doesn't matter; you're wrong" next time!
I've never really looked at the slashcode (I will do so now), but maybe some tihing like this could be added. www.whatever.com I assume slashcode is in perl, if not you get my point. $post =~ s#\s*(?:http://)?(.*?)\s*#$1#igs;
Me. I will fight. Who do I fight?
Hello Kettle,
You, my friend are as black as pitch.
With love, Pot.
I haven't tried this before, but here goes, link.
Wow...
Napster is a protocol for sharing files between users. With Napster, the files stay on the client machine, never passing through the server. The server provides the ability to search for particular files and initiate a direct transfer between the clients. In addition, chat forums similar to IRC are available. OpenNap extends the Napster protocol to allow sharing of any media type, and the ability to link servers together.
opennap is a server for connecting the clients together, and is not a client itself. If you are looking for a client, see the list below.
I hope that they don't strike opennap down. opennap should be a good test for fair use.
Don't let the lusers get you down.
For every OpenNap server that is shut down, Ten more will open in it's place. No one, not even the RIAA can stop the spread of information.
"Technically, a cat locked in a box may be alive or dead." -Kurt Cobain
LOL, indeed ;-)
BRx.
Life after capitalism? The participatory economics project
Most Cable and DSL providers I have dealt with loosely enforce a ban on servers (I've been turned off for it on one occassion, mind you.) However, they are usually very polite in informing you of the reason for your service interruption and are usually more than willing to get you back online with a simple slap on the hand.
Remember, these people *want* your $30/mo.
However, if they have cut your service *and have not told you why.* Or _refuse_ to tell you why then they are as much involation of your service contract as [you may be.] Getting in touch with their legal dept. is not such a bad thing: it means you're serious in getting the information you need... information you have a *right to have.*
Best lawyers in the world or no, not even the Telco can't arbitrarily cut your service without providing you at the very least a clear cut reason. (And they know that, which makes me wonder why they wouldn't tell you... since all they've got to say is "You were in violation of TOS" and unless you've got cash to burn there's nothing you can do at that point.)
BRx.
Life after capitalism? The participatory economics project
It seems the most unnatural, abitrary and difficult-to-uphold rules are made when people try and decide what is fair.
I don't know why some people believe that laws, justice, and government should be "fair". Who believes that life is fair all the time? Why should human institutions be more "fair" than life?
Fairness for all is completely impractical and even counter-intuitive. When people talk about fairness, they are inevitably talking about what they want, and trying to rationalize why they should have it.
Anyway, to get on to intellectual property: You don't own ideas. All ideas are based upon existing ideas that others came up with. Ever hear Newton's famous quote that says something about how he believes that if he had achieved important discoveries, it was only because he stood on the shoulders of giants? I think it's true enough, but if we were to develop laws in the modern system based upon Newton's belief, we'd have profit from every new idea being drained into royalties from all the ideas it was based upon (and recursion from there on).
If you want to keep an idea for yourself, then don't communicate it to anyone else in any form. You can't believe that mommy/daddy/government is always going to be there for you, protecting you against what happens naturally.
-------
loosing all hope is an ideal
-------
Incite and flee.
Limewire is the best gnutella client yet. Each Limewire client on the gnutellanet actually strengthens the network. It is rather large for a gnutella client, but it is (hopefully) a sign of great things to come.
ALL YOUR MISTRANSLATION ARE BELONG TO US.
I'm not surprised by the RIAA's decision even if I don't necessarily agree with it. After all, the RIAA truly does believe that they would make more money methods did not exist of distributing their content for free. They may even be correct.
Further more, the RIAA isn't without legal grounds. The fact is, the OpenNap servers are indeed facilitating the transfer of illegally copied material. Even worse, that's almost all they're used for.
Think of a speakeasy during the prohibition. Their purpose was to serve alcohol, and serving a glass or two of orange juice now and then didn't absolve them of legal responsibility. These OpenNap servers are the same way. The operators know that illegal material is going to be transferred through them. In fact, they know that their primary use will be for piracy.
You may not like the RIAA, but going after these servers is perfectly reasonable from their point of view.
- qpt
--
Domine Deus, creator coeli et terrae respice humilitatem nostram.
hey even if it is agenst the law to hold illegal data it will never be illegal to transmit data. the packets are moving at the physical, transport, and network level, they do not supply anything to the data.
;)
if illegal materials were moving through anarport does the airport and airline staff stop it or do the police stop it?
A: the police
-The American people have overpaid; I am here to ask for a refund.
good point...the recording industry wants to maintain the value of there product and to do that they must restrict the number of "good" copies
-The American people have overpaid; I am here to ask for a refund.
I for one am sick of hearing about this crap. All that I have to say is fsck the RIAA. However, I also am sick of hearing people complain about it. If you do not like do something about it. There is not much that I can do. Except refuse to buy New CD's. In fact I do not think that I have baught a new cd in well over a year. I have grown very fond of used cd shops. I suggest that everybody do the same.
Fluff went to a banker asking for some bills
They banker said I ain't got that
But I sure go some powerful pills!
Tut via bazo est aperteni al nia!!
--
Car Granda Justa!!
Tut via P2P Protocol est aperteni al nia!!
--
Car Granda Justa!!
It seems to me that a large number of American problems stem from their wholesale rejection of the British values that served them so well up until 1776. Perhaps you chaps have thrown the baby out with the bathwater !
I look forward to the time when Americans learn of such things as good manners, etiquette, and a sympathy for the underdog. All good British qualities sadly lacking in our colonial cousins despite their mainly British origin.
Sorry if I have upset anyone, I am quite new to this worldwide internet thing.
Toodle pip old chaps.
-- The sun never sets on the British Empire
see, what's really dumb about all of this is that the record companies went after napster because they were making money, or at least that was the goal, and their reasoning behind it. This doesn't apply to OpenNap though. it's free. hell, I could open one up (but hey, we all already know this, but I haven't seen anyone saying it yet)
What are you posting Dave?
As a big time fan of mp3's I am always worried about Napster being shut down...until I got Napigator. :)
I always said that openNap would carry me through the (possible) no-Napster period...And I'd better be right. Why The F$#K even bother trying to tag everyone (not unlike myself) who are too cheap to buy CD's
Steve
no matter how rich you are, you can only drink about 18-19 litres of beer a day.
No matter how rich you are, you can only drink 18-19 lirtes of beer a day.
I live in Canada, and don't really care if trading music is legal or not....I guarantee that there are WAY more Yanks on Napster than Canucks. Ahhhh technology
No matter how rich you are, you can only drink 18-19 lirtes of beer a day.
Is it really irrelevant? Gnutella, contrary to public belief is not purely decentralized. Companies like clip2 are investing lots of money into a service that provides addresses of "active, well-positioned Gnutella hosts 24/7 for over six months." Another thing to note, is that Napster was shutdown because it simulated illegal file distribution through its software... So let's create a hypothetical situation in which the providers of the host information were shutdown, along with the companies that produce the software(i.e. bearshare, gnotella, limewire, toadnode...etc) Would that not at least stifle the growth of Gnutella, which is already having a difficult time scaling?
Organize a large group of people.
Arrange a date.
File as many small claims court claims on or around said date.
As long as there are several hundred/thousand small claims country wide the company will be overwhelmed with paper work. All people would have to be willing to put out the money to file the claim as it is unlikely that they will win the case.
Mind you I am not sure about the legality of this, but it would create confusion within the companies legal team. It also would be kind of fun to watch the head lawyers office while he gets all the registered letters =)
So the RIAA thinks they can shut down anyone using a server running the OpenNap protocol now? This is ridiculous. What next? Target people who run DNS servers that point to sites with illegal content? Sue Internic for contribitory infringement?
OK, lets say that I decide to run an OpenNap server specifically to pass around my own music and 'jam sessions' of my buddies. Then somebody comes along, logs in, and lists their share full of crappy 90's pop music. (And just to make it more fun, lets say this user is from a country with no copyright laws.) At the same moment, somebody at the RIAA checks napigator and decides to run their standard battery of searches on my server and finds Mr.PoorMusicalTaste and his 'illegal' MP3's. All of a sudden, my high speed connection is yanked and I've got a lawsuit on my arse. This isn't right, people.
Whatever your view on the whole philosophy of copyright, there's a certain point where personal freedom must come before the ability to protect IP. What I fear most is that somehow, the OpenNap / Gnutella / Freenet protocols *themselves* will wind up banned in the US just like DeCSS. The War on IP is not going to stop at Napster Corp. And eventually, the RIAA is going to grow tired of playing whack-a-mole and go for even more comprehensive legislation. The time to do something is now.. and I don't mean setting up as many OpenNap servers as you can or copying RIAA content on Gnutella. Support your local cultural centers, bands, artists, etc. Support your local charitable organizations and communities. Lets get back to REAL American culture. The culture before it was owned by corporations.
I wonder how they think they'll shut down SneakerNet?
Sure. The intent is obviously to facilitate trading of music that has been expressly licensed for such distribution. Offspring and Brunching Shuttlecocks have been mentioned on Slashdot; Napster has a list of more.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I'm currently in arguments^H^H^H^H^Hnegotiations ;) with Ampcast, to get the ability to produce CDs through their soon-coming CD burning service using my own usage restriction, which is 'all commercial rights reserved, noncommercial copying OKAY'. If you got into legal trouble (as you'd like to do- sounds like a good experiment) I can't speak for other artists but I would happily send you _written_ permission to host my stuff- in fact I would make helping you a priority, and would rush you whatever you needed for the court case, anything that I could do. If logistics permitted I'd even participate as a witness or something.
If anybody is in this situation and needs my help let me know, I consider it supremely important...
Passing legislation that gave them a cut of every blank tape sold, in exchange for which _you_ theoretically got permission to make copies of stuff for your own use.
It's called the Audio Home Recording Act. I'm not surprised you're not familiar with it, because it took only a minor change in recording media for them to completely forget _their_ part of the bargain and start acting like you have no right to copy anything.
Of course, they still get paid a cut of every blank tape and 'audio' CDR! :P I think next they should lobby for getting 1% of the price of every _car_, because people listen to pirated music while driving down the street.
Full time artists in the current system have, on the average, maybe two years worth of career. Two years of full-time versus a life-time of 'hobby time' isn't as big a difference as you might think. Mind you, this could also be fixed by getting the labels to respect artists more (in theory...) but I thought it was a relevant point. It's possible that allowing artists to grow at their own pace and contribute art over their _whole_ lifetimes is a better way...
Additionally, if they ask you to remove something under the terms of the DMCA, and do so falsely, they may be leaving themselves open to legal action.
--
Not only did they get a cut of the sale of all blank recording media, a /. article from a couple of weeks ago said that Germany is trying to write a law requiring all computer manufacturers to pay a fee, because all computers are potential copyright infringement devices - it would equal out to about $80 more per machine.
Is your ass feeling sore now?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
How sad. They will continue to fight this at the effect level, and ignore the cause. The fact that people go to Napster et. al. for music is just an effect of the prime cause -- CDs are too damn expensive.
Until that is "fixed", any number of solutions will be pursued by those who love music, but think they are getting gouged paying for it.
...and this action is fruitless. So what if they shut down OpenNap (and as the article points out, overseas servers are going to make that a difficult proposition)? At the worst, I could set up a private anonymous service to put Bob in touch with Joe so they can exchange whole burned CDs of MP3s -- and then what is the RIAA going to do?
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
I think you mean the gunwale.
I wrote parts of this stuff
But any viable replacement for Napster (and there will be one) must stress NON-INFRINGING uses from the beginning.
How do you "stress" one particular use of this sort of system? It's a directory service! Since MP3 files have specific types of metadata (ID3 tags with artist/songname/time/etc), OpenNap servers can provide a directory service which stresses that sort of audio encoding; but what, to a computer, differentiates copyrighted MP3 files from public domain MP3 files or copyrighted files authorized for redistribution? That stupid little "copyright bit" in the header that nobody sets?
OpenNap is a server, not a judge; to a server data is data. Now, if by "stress non-infringing uses" you mean that the operator/programmer should make some sort of blather about what their service should *really* be used for, then that's at least practical, even if it is completely meaningless. Do Stallman's views on proprietary software prevent me me from backing up my Windows partition with GNU tar? (Great idea if you're as tired of reinstalling self-destructed Win9x partitions as I am, BTW) Software doesn't care what it's owner's moral beliefs are, unless those beliefs are reflected in the code's operation.
You need some sort of trust relationship between the peers to prevent this sort of attack. It is possible a SlashDot-like moderation system to rate the trustworthiness of the peers could lessen the impact of such attacks.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
"So on one hand we take television broadcasts. It's legal to record these things, so long as they are used for private showings.
What about video rentals? Do those shops pay an IP licencing fee (beyond the purchace of the actual movie)?"
Ummm...yeah they do. The video stores don't pay the same $19.95 we do when we buy DVDs or Video Tapes...they are spending quite a bit more and most of this is because of licensing fees.
Personally, I think Sean Fanning shot himself in the foot a long time ago
... BIG money!
No he didn't. He took the idea to a bunch of capitalists, who saw it as a chance that they might get a significant piece of the music distribution business by putting them in a negotating position with the record companies. If they were wrong, they were out their investment. But if they were right
Note that these weren't a bunch of starry-eyed slashdotters who believed in the higher ideals of "Sharing" and "Information wants to be Free". They were balls-to-the-wall, copyrights-be-damned, give-me-a-piece-of-the-action types who could give a shit about anything but potential longterm profits.
Fanning and his little dormrooom VB project was just along for the ride. Well paid for his efforts, of course.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I agree. I've been saying that for a long time. The only aspect of P2P that is worth mentioning in Napster's case, is in the way it clouds the issue of liability for both Napster and the sharers, ethics aside. Put simply, if we were to do away with copyright tomorrow, music "sharing" (piracy) services would surely revert back to client-server architecture, as it's a more efficient, more reliable, easier to use, and easier to maintain design.
Of course, I still have doubts about the long term success of mp3.com and like ventures, but those same arguments would apply every bit as much to Napster-like technologies. I believe people over-emphasize the "distribution" elements of the music industry. In other words, there is a lot more than merely recording and distributing music, the only issues that mp3.com (and its user) seems to pay substantial attention to. Even if we assume the music on mp3.com is of equal or greater quality to what is popular today, there is still a large void between the independent artists of today and the masses that popular music draws on. Marketing and promotion is how the artist crosses the void between obscurity (having to work a day job) and popularity (doing it full time), unfortunately, both cost a lot of money to do at the required levels. The only way the artist and/or the industry can recoup their costs is by making a hit, that sells millions of records. Not every record that is marketed (ignoring the other costs) is going to be a hit, only a percentage of them can be. In short, what results is the need for capital that is willing to be risked and know-how. Today, this comprises the much reviled industry that RIAA represents.
Whether distribution is online or on land is practically irrelevant to the industry (ignoring the potential for piracy), as it's a relatively small percentage of their costs. Everything else being equal, if a client-server technology were to replace the retail stores that sell today, their costs would certainly drop. However, those costs are just a small fraction. Air time would still need to be bought. Promotion would still be necesary. Is it possible that a few of the players might change? Sure. But their fundamental nature would be much the same. The people that take the brunt of the risk, the labels, would still have to demand the lionshare of the profits. In short, the most artists will only see a slice of what they sell. There is life.
Monopoly generally means that only one company, distinct entity, or individual controls an industry. RIAA is an organization that is comprised of a handful of companies, to represent their common interests. These common interests needn't have anything to do with furthering their control of the industry; they can, and do, have something to do with preventing things like piracy, regulation, legislation, etc. The existence of RIAA and the fact their their companies control 90% of the industry does not, in and of itself, mean they are are a monopoly. Now if RIAA was some sort of conspiracy, where they routinely conspired to fix prices and keep competition out, the most you might call them is an oligopoly.
In any event, if you call RIAA a monopoly, then you should definetely call any number of unions monopolies too, especially because they explicitly set out to exercise control over any number of industries and services. In other words, it's quite common place for an industry to be 95% unionized. They often use these controls to fix wages and prices. Even though each person is distinct, the union, the entity, controls 95% of the industry in question. So by your definition, this is a monopoly.
You imply that usenet is good because pirates cannot afford or bring the necessary resources to the table. Well obviously, but then it should also follow that when pirates are no longer considered pirates, that the vast demand for a legal product would result in many companies seeking to meet that demand with better alternatives. Think about it for a minute.
When you want to download a piece of shareware/freeware/open source software/whatever, where do you go? Usenet? Napster et. al? Or one of the many centralized and maintained servers? Look at the success of sites like Tucows, Cdrom.com, etc. Why would anyone want to put up with all the inadequacies of either Napster or Usenet when they can save time and effort by downloading a verifiable copy of software (or music/videos) from a legitimate source? What's more, empirically speaking, if Usenet and the like are so efficient, why aren't there any substantial and legitimate downloads on them? In almost every case, the traditional client server method is preferred. Lately we're seeing technologies such as Akamia (sic?) that do a good job of distributing highly demanded downloads across the internet in an efficient and speedy manner, even more reason not to use P2p.
I just don't buy it. I can't say that P2P will never have a use, but most of the hyped software that supposedly employs it is either silly or illegal--hardly proof of its worth. Also, let me head off an argument that you might make, sometimes we do find certain legitimate downloads are more available using P2P-type systems (because the servers are at excess capacity), but there are generally rare and brief. They tend to happen when demand scales so rapidly that the distributors do not have time to scale. It may be true that some P2P systems do not have this problem, because as demand goes up, so does the replication in a suffiently corresponding amount. But whenever there is a sustained or predictable demand for something, there is almost always a financial incentive to meet the demand (i.e., grow). Once that has happened, P2P is relatively worthless. In other words, on the aggregate, P2P does not hold up against the more established and beter monied methods.
In my opinion, one need look no further than where and how the monied and legitimate downloads are occuring. It's capitalism in action. It may not be perfect, but it's generally quite efficient. Even when the reasons for the state of things is not immediately apparent, there are often underlying issues that reveal themselves when you re-examine them. The piracy community does not fully enjoy the benefits of capitalism (nor should it). Because it is illegal to pirate goods, it's damn hard to setup a central server and cover your costs (never mind make money). Because legal goods fully enjoy capitalism, they tend to use the more efficient methods (e.g., servers). When there are legitimate and substantial uses for P2P in its current form, then you might say that there is proof that it's worthwhile, but until then it's just a theory.
Spreading FUD about it counts as a "way of dealing" with it, no?
My Edguy "The Savage Poetry" CDs have this printed on them:
It may be a laughable "way of dealing with it" but it's still a way. ;-) Saying
that they have a way to deal with Gnutella
(thereby making some Gnutella users hesitant
or nervous, perhaps) is an action in itself.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
What do you expect from a company that's incompetent at both Internet and telephony?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
There are really several issues at hand.
1) Napster, the company, and it's trial
2) Client-server technology
3) Peer-Peer technoogy.
1) Napster & the lawsuit. The real issue here is that Napster is a company, and as a company, was attempting to profit, knowing their service would be wildly popular because people would use it primarily to pirate music. OpenNap servers, being non-profit, might have a way around this.. it's one thign to make money off contributory infringement.. it's another to do something for free.
2) Napster is based on the client-server model.... lots of clients, few servers... you take out the servers, you shut down the model. It has an easily-attackable point. OpenNap servers also suffer this same problem.
3) In the peer-to-peer model (god I hate that buzzword though..) we merely use the bandwidth and computing power available to us to all share things with each other, in a decentralized fashion. This is really how things MUST go in the future; it leaves no single point of attack. Evenetualy I predict that Instant-messaging clients (icq) and other technologies will al come under legal attack simply because there is a way to do so.
Their 'product' is already protected by copyright law, period. Their 'copy controls, like CSS on DVD' are not 'implying' anything...though breaking those protections for the purposes of copying is illegal accordign to the DMCA.
they are providing a service whose purpose is to facilitate the exchange of copyrighted works for no charge. That in itself is enough to go after them. it's not "just a list" any more than an anti-abortion registry of doctor's names, address, and family members is "just a list." Ok that comparison is inflamitory, but you see what I mean. It is not just the list, it is what the list represents and the purpose for which it is created that is important. Can anyone seriously claim that the intent of the creation of the lists on napster servers _aren't_ to facilitate trading of popular music?
While we're at it, have a ORBS-like blacklist of clients and servers known to be used by the RIAA. Not a perfect solution, but will help slow down the process of gathering evidence for their legal attacks.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
I cannot understand how any reasonable judge could argue that explaining how to commit a crime is the same thing as committing it.
The OpenNap servers are only directories-- they don't contain illegal contents, just listings, so how can they be held accountable?
Wouldn't be surprised if this has been discussed before somewhere, but would Napster be able to patent the distribution of music via centralized servers? Is there prior art somewhere that would nullify a patent like this? If not, it would be a wonderful little surprise to the RIAA/record companies when they try to get their own plans out the door...
if( read(this) ) { you = programmer; }
I think the answer is something along the lines of the Reflector strategy being devloped here. A good idea, but not quite stable enough to keep up for extended periods (yet). Give it a read-thru and see if it doesn't address the issue quite well.
DataSquid.net, a little about me.
This might make things difficult for hosts in the USA, but what can they realistically do about servers in, say, Europe? Or a "Sealand"-ish offshore host? (Although the DeCSS issue does come to mind...)
/. 'cause the rebuttal is always "yeah but you're STEALING!!! It's WRONG!" Nevertheless, people are now accustomed to getting free music and WILL NOT GO BACK. Even the clueless will get clued in quickly when Napster (1)shuts down (2)begins charging $, and millions will migrate to whatever alternative is available. Stealing or not, that's just how people ARE.
Ultimately the RIAA would seem to be aiming at an ever-moving target here anyway--have all the recent attacks on "software piracy" by MS and others been a deterrent to the warez d00dz? I still see just as much free (as in beer!) stuff available now as there has ever been...
The Napster argument gets old here on
props to all dead homiez
But you didn't like that, because you have a magic photocopier too. You wanted to photocopy all of your stuff at a cost of $~0.30 to you, and sell the copies at the full retail cost of the originals. Because you believe that don't just own the toaster, you insist that you own the idea of the toaster.
So why should any company decide to develop a toaster then, if there isn't any way they can make money because 'its okay to steal as long as its a copy'...?
Hey! They linked to sites that offer software for copyright infringement (according to them at least). Can someone sue them?
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
1/2 :-)
Marginally more seriously, Sony was, what, twenty, thirty years old at the time (founded in 1949, making a rice steamer, of all things). Lots of stock holders. Lots of existing vested interest. And existing analogies (audio tape) to draw on. And let's face it, TV broadcasters still made their money. They were tossing the content over the transom anyway.
-----
Klactovedestene!
Yeah, that's what I mean, and even if it is meaningless architecturally, it's important legally. I mean, that's what the sony case and the napster case have shown us - a technology is legal if and only if it has substantial non-infringing uses. Unfortunately the definition of "substantial" is quite arbitrary, but anything we could do from the very beginning of a project to help sway this definition, would help.
A much better system would be to have a gnutella like cluster of "servers". Clients could connect to one of the servers by getting a list of servers from a known source (just like connecting to gnutella) and then upload a list of all the files they're sharing to it.
Everything you describe already exists. It's called IRC. Why not set up a P2P client on top of it - using IRC for the requests, then P2P for actual transfer ?
Thomas Miconi
1) Have software declared illegal
2) Rabidly pursue and shut down any site that even links to it.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
(Score: -1, Redundant)
Napster hopes to operate under a plan in which it will pay recording companies $200M a year. But recording companies are "cool to the plan, saying they are moving ahead with their own online plans".
All I want to know is: why the hell do the labels have lawyers that move at warp speed, and engineers that move like snails? If they'd gone ahead with their online plans a bit faster, they would have had results that convinced them it wasn't even necessary to sue Napster. I don't really want to go back to having to swap mp3s over ftp and irc.
They should spend more effort on progress, and less on suing people.
Polygram "relented". They offered to allow community radio stations to play 'alternative' music for free. The stations held firm and simply refused to play polygram until they withdrew royalties altogether. Polygram finally gave in to the demand.
Napster is in a similar situation. Record companies have to explicitly say that they want certain tracks/files deleted from napster. Once they do so, Napster has to remove those files.
It is the record companies' decision to have napster remove specific files. Companies /artists that like the service that Napster provides are free to allow their files to be shared on the service.
If people refuse to buy music that is banned on Napster, the RIAA is going to be very slow to pull music from the service.
I think that it's worth noting that the RIAA has not, from what I can find, made an application to get a new ruling from the trial court. I expect that it's because they know that doing so will cost them sales.
The original, blanket, ruling was good for them because it shut down ALL music sharing -- including non-RIAA artists who wanted their music to be available. It would have put the RIAA back firmly in control of all music distribution, including non-RIAA artists. This is what I think they really want in this lawsuit.
Despite their in-court bravado about what napster is supposedly costing them, I'm sure that there's a stack of internal email about what it would cost them to start pulling only their music from napster.
I, like many others, presume that this lawsuit is more about the RIAA wanting control of music distribution than it is about Napster supposedly cutting into their profits. If that's true, then they can't afford to just pull their own music from napster, and it's not going to happen. The reason why is that it would create a powerful ecological niche for smaller music distributors and independant artists.
With a popular, viable non-RIAA-controlled distribution channel available to small artists, artists would not be quite as hungry to get an RIAA contract. The RIAA would have to bargin in better faith with artists.
Fair terms for artists are not in the RIAA's financial interest.
--
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
How about an anonymous proxy for Napster/Opennap/Gnutella. You log into the proxy, the RIAA only gets the proxy's IP address in a trace, and they have no idea who to go after.
The added latency of the proxy is a problem, but the security and privacy inherent in the architecture is outstanding!!
The final solution to this RIAA crap is so dead simple.
========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
You can work all your life, pay off your debts and own your own property and then you die and the government gets a nice slice of your property and then your offspring, who should have had an easier time of things, now have to work to pay for their property.
This affects the poorer much more than the rich. The rich, although loosing a bigger chunk, can soon make it up as the money that they have breeds money. Although it looks like inheritance tax hits the rich, it's actually much more crippling to the poor.
Rich
ok, the US courts determine that anything Napster must be blocked at all levels. The RIAA starts suing ISPs, bandwidth providers, international router hosts. The ISPs, bandwidth providers and international router hosts all start to close ports and scan packets and spend lots of money doing it. The US citizens get higher ISP charges to pay for the lawyers and techniques blocking their access to a service. The software maintainers incorporate common random port usage with compressed/encrypted packets. Rinse, lather and repeat. non-US citizens have a lovely distributed music (file) sharing system and US citizens are starting to try and figure out just when they started to lose control of the internet (about the time it became quicker to dial-in to a canadian/mexican/irish server for internet access, until the phone providers started to block it to avoid paying the RIAA any more settlements).
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
RIAA has paid enough to enough SC justices that they take the decision for granted. (Not likely: SC isn't that bribeable.)
Take a look at this. You won't be whistling the same tune by the time you're done.
It makes me retch. I had the utmost respect for them (hell, I'm not even American), but that's all but gone now.
--
Not even the best of the best, only the stuff which the masses like. This could be called "hypemarketing": change the hype often enough to let people buy more and more CD's, without considering quality.
Yes, I consider quality when I buy a product, also a CD. But I know most people buy because of the magic word: "hype".
Let's mix up the terms hype and art. Put it in a can, close the lid and mix it around a bit. Look again, and you'll see Art in a small corner and Hype all over the place.
Music is art IMHO, and art should be promoted. It's utterly insane to think that record labels can make the decisions of us to consider whats good and whats bad art.
One line: "Record companies promote hype, not art!"
This is a replacement signature.
Court for Ninth Circuit, District of California, which is what the RIAA's email mentions.
---
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Please, don't make me come find you and vomit in your face. "Alot" is not a word. It's "A lot." Definite article "A", adjective "lot." Two words.
Oh, and also, record companies don't take any risk whatsoever with an artist. The artist is required to pay back all of the record company's "risk" out of their own measly 7% return on the record sales.
The average first album for any band almost invariably is recorded in a period of one or two days. I can think of a number of memorable examples (the first Beatles album took 12 hours to record, I believe) where the "risk" cost the record company exactly dick in terms of effort. One day's worth of normal operations wasn't a fuck of a lot. Then there's the mass-production. This is where a record company really cashes in. CD reproduction costs less than a penny per in major quantities. The cover, minus the cost of commissioning the art, is even less. And again most "first albums" by bands feature cover art in the form of a blurred photograph of the band with some cheap computer-generated lettering showing the band's name. So the major cost is in marketing the album. We all know where those marketing dollars go -- to Britney Spears' account, of course! The record company, after investing what I guarantee you is less than ten thousand real dollars on this kind of "risk" then puts their CD out, and immediately realizes a massive return of 93% per unit sold, especially if the band already has an underground following. If the band is one of those Nirvana-types that actually spawns a whole movement, the record company immediately starts scouting the area where the band first broke through and picks up every phony-ass act that sounds just like them and pimps them out there too. There's no risk at all in marketing a Bush album. Fuck, the band doesn't even need to know how to play (believe me, I've seen them in person and they don't). So frankly you are either ignorant or a shill. It's hard to tell.
Record companies are not interested in the well-being of musicians, or their music, or the audience that the music is directed to. They are merely there to collect fees as the music passes from the creator to the listener. That's why they own the copyright on the recordings, not the artist, without whom the recording is completely impossible.
Also you said: I know if I owned a Record company I would hound you till the ends of the earth.
It's funny, as a musician I hound people all the time to take free copies of my music. Because I know that if the message therein reaches you you'll be back for more of what counts. Record companies can only view this kind of behavior in terms of "potential lost sales." The concept of generating a loyal customer base designed around repeat business due to the high quality of one's product just doesn't seem to be in vogue in corporate america these days. Instead most prominent and popular business models seem to revolve around finding an already existing popular source of wanted products, frequently created at someone else's expense and with someone else's efforts, squatting on the source of that with an army of asshole lawyers, and charging the holy hell out of people to get access to it. The typical record company is an excellent example of this. They do not create the music (some of them seem to be unaware that their product is in fact music), they do not actually record it, and it exists entirely independent of them. The Internet makes their existence far less important, they know it, and are running around in a blind panic trying to prevent the inevitable.
No, you are wrong.
Have you ever heard the phrase 'ars gratia artis'? It means 'art for art's sake'.
Many artists throughout history have created art for the love of it. In fact, the work of most painters has traditionally been worth money only when the painters are dead.
You seem to think that being an artist is like being a plumber or a software engineer. (I'm not saying there's no art in these jobs, but plumbers and software engineers don't get paid for art).
Art is what some of the human race does in their spare time to try to make their life worthwhile. Others write code because they enjoy it. If you try to do it for money, it doesn't have any soul. Hence the large amount of voluntarily contributed software you enjoy, which seems to me to have soul.
Money has to be a beneficial side effect, or art becomes a meaningless product, tailored to a market, with nothing useful to add to what came before it.
As I've said elsewhere, if an artist feels that I should not experience their work without paying for the pleasure, it's not worth experiencing.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
By this logic a canned food drive is a commercial activity because food (which ordinarily one has to buy) is given to anonymous recipients. Man this upsets me. An ordinary person would think that charging money is what constitutes commercial use.
The music industry stole music from us. We are just taking it back!
My handle breaks slashcode, what does your handle do?
The way to beat these guys (MPAA, RIAA) is to not have central servers to shut down. The problem then becomes co-ordination.
There is a pre-existing set of servers that are already set up to co-ordinate users, by which I mean allow them to identify each other online. Its called ICQ.
Lets create an app which hooks into ICQ to see what other users are online.
The other problem is the number of nodes on the network creating expotential searches. This should be addressed by each client being part of a 'group'. The members of a group would store the directories listings of each member in the group - but not the actual data.
When a search is performed the search is only sent to one member of the each group chosen at random from those currently online, thus the traffic requirements are greatly reduced.
I havn't done simulations to determine the ideal group size yet, but it shouldn't be too difficult.
ICQ could be used as just a starting point - an entry point. Once you are 'hooked into' the network you will be given other IP's of others online. The reason for this is that we don't want to give ICQ any way at all to determine who is operating the service, otherwise they will be able to close those accounts under pressure from the bad guys.
We could even avoid ICQ totally by having very basic servers which provide simple hooks into IP addresses of those in the system.
You could also make this idea of 'groups' go further, with groups of groups - where certain clients store directories for several groups.
I find it ammusing that the Internet was so successfull at information distribution that big companies are now fighting tooth and nail to PREVENT people communicating freely.
I don't believe copying commercial music is right, however that is not the concern of the bad guys. The bad guys are worried about control of the distribution media. Without control of the distribution media anyone can create 'competitive' music, and sell it without giving the record companies a cut.
This is the real concern of the bad guys - that artists will find out that they don't need to hand over their rights to the bad guys.
The system I enision is a method of sharing information - any information. I don't see how that can be outlawed.
I'd like to see what happens when RIAA tries to "lay the smack down" on all the major ISPs (who, unlike Napster and to a larger extent OpenNap server owners actually have money and clout).
Dammit! My ISP gladly cut my DSL line because of my Alternap server, but they didn't notify me. After 3 days, they still won't tell me why they cut my account! I guess I need to find out from slashdot. Time to switch ISPs!
-mdek.net
Let's be sure we know what we are fighting for first. On the one hand, mp3s are not a right, they are a privilage. Noone ever died because they had to shell out $20 for a CD (if someone has, they have really messed up priorities). On the other hand, this reasoning just leads us down a slippery slope. After all, free speech is not essential for life (in the strictest biochemical sense.) So does mean that the government and/or companies should have the power to limit speech? I don't think so. We need to draw the line somewhere. I think many(most?) Slashdotters would say that free speech is a good cause to die for, but mp3s aren't (yes, mp3s are speech, but not the only way of getting that same information). I agree that there is a possible threat, and that it will become more and more likely as time goes on. We should not let this threat scare us into paranoia. Not all corporations are evil, nor are all governments. If the threat becomes real, as it very well may given current trends, I would be willing to die for the cause. In some cases, violence IS the only answer. But we shouldn't all storm the RIAA's building with bazookas before there is good reason.
I'm really getting sick of the MPAA trying to pretend like it's some sort of all-powerful organization.
First claim - nobody cracked SDMI. All reports to the contrary are completely false.
Reality - the unwatermarked data has to exist in memory somewhere. It's inherently insecure. And all the claims that the scheme was cracked are falsehoods?
Now - "Meanwhile, Sherman said his group had ideas about ways of dealing with Gnutella, but wouldn't discuss them publicly."
Reality - umm, how? Aaah, so they'll shut down the Internet in the Name of Holy Copyright.
RIAA doesn't touch MyPlay.com, which allows ANY MP3 to be stored on its servers, without even checking if it's legit.
Here's my math:
Yep, RIAA is clueless.
AC comments get piped to
a distributed server for Napster-like programs? The current system has your machine logging onto a pre-specified server to get the goods, but what if machines volunteered not only to share files, but also server duties. The duties could be distributed and handed off frequently to create a "moving target." It would be like SETI@HOME...Napster@Home maybe.
If I get modded up even once I'm going to apply for a patent (I'll split the rayalties with whoever figures out how to tell new clients where the servers are.)
Scratch-o-Matic
Evil is the money of root.
next they will be after irc servers... sheesh. we can't have anything cool anymore without someone crying that they aren't making money on it.
That's the major problem with P2P. There always has to be an index somewhere if you want Joe Sixpack and his buddy John Q. Public to be able to find you. If it's a static IP, they shut you down. If it's on a dynamic DNS service, they call up Judge Kaplan and get the service shut down, appealing to some twisted "providing DNS versus hosting the server is a distinction without a difference" logic.
Bad idea. All the RIAA has to do is have some people watch that port range for matching packets, do a quick whois on ARIN to get your ISP's address, and pass it down to the lawyers.
IIRC, gnutella actually does something like this (isn't that what the ath.cx hosts are?). As I said above, though the servers themselves might be sheltered somewhat, there's nothing stopping the RIAA from having the dynamic DNS service shut down your account, driving them to bankruptcy, etc. Now, if you could find/make a dynDNS/index server in another country that would refuse to cooperate with the RIAA, you might have something. Barring that, it's either word-of-mouth, or up to your head in legal quicksand.
(Do not sign anything.) -- Fell, Planescape: Torment
- Unenforced legal rights are lost.
- Missed legal suits are actionable in shareholder lawsuits.
- Our combatative accusatorial system of justice requires that each side zealously play its cards, in the hope that the truth will be found somewhere in between.
- If Napster has lost, then blame Napster for screwing up. Don't blame the RIAA just because they fought a better fight and prevailed.
What were you expecting Napster to do? This is prudent corporate strategy and par for the course.Read the rest of this comment...
> Please, don't make me come find you and vomit in your face. "Alot" is not a word. It's "A lot." Definite article "A", adjective "lot." Two words.
:)
.70's to .90's in 500,000 volumes for the duplication and packaging.
Ok yours. To find me go to the web site and look under advertising. As for vomit, that's up to you to try, but I would not do it to close, for it will make me vomit.
> Oh, and also, record companies don't take any risk whatsoever with an artist. The artist is required to pay back all of the record company's "risk" out of their own measly 7% return on the record sales.
Yes, that's if your new without any buzz or following. But how many times have the record company failed to generate any revenue on xyz artist. Failure rate on artist are over 50%, a lot of 1 hit wonders, second album fails. ( I spelled a lot correctly
Since your an artist, I would advise that you switch management because, if your only getting 7 points on the deal someone has done something incorrectly.
>The average first album for any band almost invariably is recorded in a period of one or two days.
Mostly true.
>I can think of a number of memorable examples (the first Beatles album took 12 hours to record, I believe) where the "risk" cost the record company exactly dick in terms of effort.
I think this a bad example because you know as well as I know there are a HUGE amount of under 24 hrs. record production that have gone to be great, but I think that you have forgot the expense of promotion, also the Beatles were already established prior to landing in the USA.
> CD reproduction costs less than a penny per in major quantities.
PLEASE advise me where. I have no idea that the cost have gotten that low. Last I knew, it was in the
>We all know where those marketing dollars go -- to Britney Spears' account, of course!
That's not true, Record companies must give you a full run down of the money spent or to be spent on you.
> here's no risk at all in marketing a Bush album. Fuck, the band doesn't even need to know how to play
I don't know so I wont answer.
> So frankly you are either ignorant or a shill. It's hard to tell
Nope, I'm neutral to the entire Industry. But I believe that copyright's belong to those that buy them. If an artist is willing to give up those right's it's not the fault of a record lable.
>Record companies are not interested in the well-being of musicians, or their music, or the audience that the music is directed to. They are merely there to collect fees as the music passes from the creator to the listener. That's why they own the copyright on the recordings, not the artist, without whom the recording is completely impossible.
50/50 tie: record companies are out to make money, they are brokers in a sense. They also own the distribution system.
Do I agree with the way the record companies play the game. NO. ( look at the bottom )
In another post I made. I stated that napster model could work for both the artist and the record company IF the record company Owned the version of the studio work and the artist got the live concert version. ( I would love to have some Concert versions of my favorite RUSH songs ). The revenue model would show that napster-type system would pay the artist for LIVE concert stuff a percentage per download.
> It's funny, as a musician I hound people all the time to take free copies of my music
Did you take the time and look at my site. I take anything that relates to HIP HOP and R & B. If we like it we'll give you some love ( buzz, air time, shout-out whatever you want to call it ). There are many type of symular venues. I could give you a list if you need some help.
And you should hound people. That's the way you get your buzz going. Now if I owned a Record company and Owned all the right's to a Song I would hound everyone that is copying my LEGAL work ( I bought it remmember ) and use the Legal system to my advantage.
The rest of your statement I have not enough knowledge to make a full and understandable arguement.
I think that Artist in general need to become aware that they need proper legal representation when they are greeted by the Record Companyies. Too many time I see artist in general give it all up just to get that break. Also artist need to understand that Music ( if made for profiting ) must be looked at as a business, and as a business it should be handled with everything reviewed by a lawyer.
Now my web site is ARTISTCORNER.TV another underground / unsigned artist site is WWW.Y2KBOMBAY.COM
and thanks again for the vomit
ONEPOINT
spambait e-mail
my web site artistcorner.tv hip-hop news
please help me make it better
if you see me, smile and say hello.
The model of napster has proven to be profitable. The record comapnies want that profit. So what are they going to do? Chase after there money.
1) there going to send form letters to each and everyone that is running an OPENNAP type application. and remind those hosters that it is a letter from a lawyer.
2) They will also CC every ISP.
3) they will for there own hidden spies amoung the OPENNAP type groups. to catch every underground they can.
4) We will see someone fall and do jail time because of it.
that's my view on how it will be handled in USA side. Europe it might be the same.
Now here is the tricky part. If they scare the ISP they might be able to control it. I don't Think any ISP would like to have negative press while the US stock market is jittery about internet stocks.
How can you fight it.
1) Download from registered (legal) sites.
2) buy the CD
I know if I owned a Record company I would hound you till the ends of the earth.
Many people on this board think that record companies make money all the time but they also take alot of risk with artist, So please try to look at both sides of the problem.
Onepoint
spambait e-mail
my web site artistcorner.tv hip-hop news
please help me make it better
if you see me, smile and say hello.
This all harkens back to the pre-napster days of MP3 sharing where a Warez site would spring up, and a week later, it would be shut down only to turn up hosted on another server on another ISP. These people WILL find a way to get what they want. There's no stopping 30 million determined Americans.
"Technically, a cat locked in a box may be alive or dead." -Kurt Cobain
I wonder how many ISP's, end-users and OpenNap operators will fall for this drivel.
/. before, end-users are responsible for their activities, not service providers. The RIAA has no more legal standing to bring suits against OpenNap servers in light of the recent court decision and I would posit they have significantly *less.*
An injunction against Napster does not enjoin unrelated third parties.
Furthermore, the operation and use of OpenNap servers fall under a significantly different set of circumstances than do the operations of Napster's *commercial, for-profit* service. The Circuit Court itself said as much...
The technology is not illegal, the medium is not illegal. As I've posted on
I sincerely hope ISP's ignore letters of these sorts as they rightfully should. Or, better, yet CC on to their lawyers and otherwise ignore.
BRx.
Life after capitalism? The participatory economics project
I would be happy if all other forms of music sharing were declared illegal, as it would mean that the resources of the Open Source community would be flung into decntralised gnutella type systems.
Of course, the quality of gnutella, as it stands, leaves much to be desired, but when wider bandwidths become more commonplace and as the software and methodologies are improved, the situation will get better.
In the end, governments can regulate until they are blue in the face. The simple fact is that there is a demand for a free internet music sharing system, and it will be fulfilled, whether that is morally correct or not.
It is better that they regulate for this new reality, than that they regulate for an old and redundant reality. If they regulate as though we are in the 1980's, they will be regulating themselves out of power, not the end users of such systems, who will simply move on to the decentralised nirvana.
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
/* And you'll never guess what the dog had */
/* in its mouth... */
--Larry Wall in stab.c from perl
I have a lot of cds I don't listen to. That I don't listen to, ever. What a waste, wouldn't ya say? I have like 200 or so of these music licenses which allow me all these rights: to have and keep and do whatever else pops into mind with the darn shiny discs (save distributing unlicensed copies). Nevermind the 300 records I accidentally bought at an auction for $12. That's 12 canadian dollars, btw. So, is what's following a feasable (and legal!) distribution scheme? Call it a sort of airline overbooking with music: if I "ripped" all my cds to mp3s, and then, ummm, signed an affidavit or some such legal sounding thing stating that I had put them all through a blender and doused them in gasoline and incernerated them and then flushed the remains, but still retained the 1 license per album, could I then give that license to a public pool? When you want to listen to a song, you check out the license, and during that period no-one else can listen to it. When you're done, you give the license back to the pool. The software could even cache your favourite tunes, but disallow you from accessing them until a license freed up. And then it could even do the dishes and cook me dinner because I'm hungry!
What if you only host legal mp3's that you obtained from sites such as mp3.com and the artist official home page? Is the RIAA just assuming that you are hosting illegal files or do they actually look and listen to what you are providing?
I am thinking of hosting some of the legal files I have collected from mp3.com just to see if the RIAA send me the same letter. If they do I will be sending a letter demanding proof and an apology. Is anyone else going to try this?
I make music- but I've also had a lifelong fascination with audio gear, and that is craft. When I compose music part of it is art and part is craft... I'm expecting to begin a massive remixing of all my work soon, because again the _craft_ level of my work will take a quantum leap.
Specifically, I got into an argument with other audio techies. I'd been doing very high-end mixing through custom gear to straight 16-bit sampling, and getting very good results, too, but I was convinced through this argument that sampling at a higher resolution and dithering down to 16 bit could well deliver far superior results. And so I am getting a soundcard that has S/PDIF inputs, and will be recording through the outboard A/D converter in my Lexicon MPX-100 which can be used as a dedicated converter. In addition, I'm picking out high end audio caps to upgrade the Lexi (which is already heavily modded) seeing as it's going to be _the_ top performance A/D converter I've got.
Now, all that is craft- there's art in the choices, but mostly it's craft. And along with that, I'm paying money to Alesis, to Lexicon, to Midiman for their CO2 converter, to some vendor for whichever cap I settle on- commerce happens, driven by my needs. As a result of this, I end up with gear that can drastically outperform what most people have- and can sell that ability as a service to many artists who want to get a competitive sound with the recordings they've made.
That's how art can become craft can become income- it's not hypothetical, I'm doing exactly this, and will be able to offer mastering services in the near future, which will also extend to mastering mp3s of the music as well and having those, too, sound better than what you get off preset consumer encoders.
Yet in a sense it's all still art- because I'd be doing it anyhow, even if it wasn't laying the foundation for good honest work. Maybe that's the key- art is wonderful, important, but as you increasingly put good honest work into it, it increasingly becomes capable of bringing a return. How much? That depends on who you are and exactly what you're expecting to get a return from. I put work into _mastering_ mp3s, but it would be insane to say that distributing them was good honest work, because I just sit there and my ISP, or besonic, or ampcast, or Napster does all the work.
I must say that I respect the viewpoint that "art is not an endeavor in which one should expect to 'earn a living'". I think the operative word there is 'expect' and the second most important is 'living'. I personally live on about $600 a month. I know many people who would consider that absolutely intolerable, impossible. But for me a 'living' is not a very complicated thing. As for expectations- I expect what I'm doing to translate into a 'living' in the long run, but not because of any particular event or thing- because of my _mode_ of work, of continuing to put constant, tireless work into what I do. The purely-musician version of what I do would translate to gigging 360 days a year, no vacations, no weekends off. James Brown did basically that, and he did quite well for himself. I don't think anyone who simply sang like James Brown and wouldn't WORK like James Brown could expect the same...
1) You're probably right about the undercover bit. And the RIAA will probably do it themselves, just to get it done more efficiently than the cops will. And the RIAA will probably offer bounties to anyone who's willing to sell-out his former trading buddies.
2) I simply will not accept this abridgement of my fair use rights. People will challenge this and challenge this until somebody finally listens. In America, we have a captialist system, and as a consumer, I was raised to believe that a consumer does capitalism a great disservice by allowing themselves to be screwed over or cheated by a seller - therefore it is a consumer's MORAL DUTY to be informed, not be misled, and make sellers WORK for a living.
About a year ago, I found some songs online by a 70's rock band. Some of their songs that were on the radio, I remember, were phenominally great. You don't ever ever hear ANY of these songs played on the radio anymore, even on most "classic rock" stations. I always thought it would be great to own all of their albums. I downloaded them, but never had time to listen to them, except for a couple of the songs that I liked. I recently sat down and listened to the whole lot - and found that only the few songs that I remember were really great, the rest was kindof just filler. (sound familliar?) I mean, what if I HAD gone through all the trouble to locate these albums, likely out of priint, likely $20 a pop, likely not available at any local record store - and found out that it was mostly crap? I would have gotten screwed over, and with my dollars, I would have been supporting a system that screws over consumers, and done a grave disservice to other consumers because I was enforcing a system that encouraged uneducated consumption. exploitation. I then deleted the whole lot. Disk space is cheap, but not cheap enough to waste on crap. It basically wasn't even worth my time to burn them onto a CD for posterity.
Same thing happened with a 60's band (and lots of other music) - and I ended up tracking down and buying 4 CD's from that group.
Like it or not, free MP3 distribution IS an essential part of the music industry's distribution model. Like it or not, it's here to stay. You can't lock an idea.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Check out Fairtunes. It's a way to ensure all your money goes to the people who earned it--the artists, songwriters, etc.
Of course, that's when he was about 2 steps beyond messing around with his friends in the dorm; they didn't know it was going to bite them in the ass so significantly later on. But any viable replacement for Napster (and there will be one) must stress NON-INFRINGING uses from the beginning. Ideally, there would even be a company who would deal with some musicians directly, getting them to put their songs up on purpose... we want to show people that this is a viable distribution system, no matter what the RIAA whines.
Of course, I think the system should also make it difficult (nay, impossible!) to track who's doing what, so we won't have this problem in the future. Probably the focus should be on anonymity for privacy's sake, though, and not to concientiously protect "pirating" like Fanning intended to do all along.
It seems like the biggest problem with gnutilla and freenet (Or sharing information in general) is finding what you want. The problem with the RIAA and MPAA attacks on the infrastructure is that it's going to become illegal to index or share ANY information because you MIGHT be sharing copyrighted information. That indicates to me that the American Justice System has been founded on a presumption of guilt. In the near future it'll effectively be just as illegal for me to post MP3s of my public talks or video files of classes I teach because no one differentiates when they shotgun out these cease and desist letters.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Try calling them up and having a conversation like the following.:
The explanation, if they ask, would be that you're preparing to respond to their actions, and you expect that you'll need the information. (it's far more efficient to deliver a writ direct to the legal department.. It's less likely that it'll get lost/redirected/etc.).There's no reason or need to be specific here. You're setting stuff up, and what you precisely you'll be doing with the targeting information is entirely your business, until the payload lands.
--
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Will they? If they do how long can it last? How many people are willing to have lawyers threatening them?
I certaintly don't mean this as a flame or troll of any sort, I do ask it as a question though.
While shutting down your server after a week or a day of operation is no big deal, eventually you are going to run out of loyalists that are willing to take the risks of lawyers banging at the doors because your doing something that a huge corporate entity doesn't want you to do. Personally, I have enough stress in my life that I would just as assume not have a lawyer send me a letter. Who needs that, and supposing that there was some trial down the road, then I really wouldn't want them having my real name and information. Would you?
I don't like the shutdowns of OpenNap, and I certainly don't condone them, but while lots of people are idealists (is that even the right word?) at heart, their fear of the reprocussions will hold them from actions that would bring trouble, even if its only possible trouble, down on their own heads. So I ask you, how long will people be ready and willing to bring themselves before the corporate sharks just to keep OpenNap going?
"We're so tough we're made of nerf!" --D&D Character Tagline
The RIAA aren't that bothered (at the moment) about the priacy taking place on Napster - honestly that doesn't eat into their profits that much. Ever wondering about those "studies" that show napster users buy more CD's - doesn't matter. What about the fact the RIAA aren't terribly interested in a subscription based Napster (ie. royalty payments).
The fact is that even if Napster demonstratedly improved CD sales, even by a sizable amount, it doesn't matter! More CD's sold != more profit as some would think. A lot of people use Naspter to make informed choices about the music they buy. You can source a wide-range of material, find what you like and just buy that. This means less profit!
The record companies use ecomonies of scale to keep their profits so high. Hypothetical record company "A" might have 1 million artists signed to it - but 995,000 are consigned to the "only make 50,000" copies basket. The record companies promote who they want to big, they get big and you print 5 million CD's of just them. There's very little waste, and you don't have to change the presses that often.
Now imagine that people start making highly informed choices about the music they buy - and are less swayed by the marketing pushes. You could no longer predict who's going to big. Obscure bands could become popular over-night, and "insert famous band X"'s latest album flops because everyone hears it first and decides it sucks.
Eventually you might have to print an even quanity of CD's across your whole range simply because you no longer have control over who makes it. A whole lot of a whole lot of different stuff to burn makes you a lot less cash!
They don't just want to be the content-providers they want to govern what people think the content is - they're had this hold for years and their shareholders will demand that they don't give it up now.
A much better system would be to have a gnutella like cluster of "servers". Clients could connect to one of the servers by getting a list of servers from a known source (just like connecting to gnutella) and then upload a list of all the files they're sharing to it. The servers in the cluster maintain a list of the files all the clients connected to them are sharing as well as ips and sharelists of other clients which they periodicaly download from other servers, the server could also set some limit as to how big their client/shares DB gets. Ther server would also periodicaly ping the clients they have sharelists for so when the client exits it can remove their sharelist from it's DB. Searches would be handled in a similar method as gnutella except that because the servers are dedicated to routing searches and because each server contains the sharelist for multiple clients, searching would be much faster and produce better results. With this system clients serving files no longer have to route searches and the system is no more vunerable than gnutella to legal attacks.
If you ask me the ideal P2P filesharing system is something truly distrubuted like Freenet or Mojo Nation. But niether of thoes are ready for prime time and this kind of system has to reach a critical mass befor they can provide reliable/fast downloads.
Recommended contribution to the Offshore OpenNap Fund is $10/year. In the event not enough funds are raised to support an offshore OpenNap server for a year all funds will be returned to the contributors.
Matt.
And who really cares if somebody's trading a britney spears mp3? It's not like we hear Eminem, Britney Spears, Offsprint, etc, enough on the radio.
"I keep looking in the want-ads under 'revolutionary' but there don't seem to be any listings.. "
Intellectual property laws exist only because we have a slavery system. Out livelihood depends on working for others so we can pay our taxes. The reason that we have to work for others is that 99% of people have been deprived of an inheritance in the land. Income property is owned by a few and the government. The others are slaves. Artists and inventors depend on their art to make a living. Can we blame them? We all do because we are all slaves. So now we are swimming in a ocean of laws and rules that take away our liberties, one by one.
The internet and other communication technologies are the first major kinks in the armor of a sick system. As technology progresses, it will eventually die a horrible death. What will happen to a slave-based economy when robots replace everybody, i. e., when human labor, knowledge and expertise become worthless?
We should all demand a system where everybody is guaranteed income property, a piece of the pie. There is plenty for everybody.
Communism confiscates all property and enslaves everybody. Capitalism gives property to a few and enslaves the rest. It's sad. The land should not be divided for a price. It should be an inheritance for us and our children an their children.
Demand liberty! Nothing less.
From: Antipiracy@riaa.com
Subject: unauthorized distribution of sound recordings
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001
VIA EMAIL
February 20, 2001
RE: IP Address: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
Dear XXX:
We are writing concerning the above referenced system being made available
at an IP address assigned to XXX. The Recording Industry Association of
America, Inc. (RIAA) is a trade association whose member record companies
produce, manufacture and distribute approximately ninety (90) percent of all
legitimate sound recordings sold in the United States. Under penalty of
perjury, we submit that the RIAA is authorized to act on behalf of its
member companies in matters involving the infringement of their sound
recordings, including enforcing their copyrights and common law rights on
the Internet.
Our investigation has revealed that XXX is hosting
or otherwise making available a Napster-like (OpenNap) server that is
operating a peer-to-peer file copying system. The system is located at the
above-referenced IP address. This system allows users to search the file
libraries of other users connected to this system and facilitates the
copying of files between users. In order to access this type of system, a
user must download specialized client software such as Rapigator
(www.rapigator.com) or FileNavigator (www.filenavigator.com).
This system, which we accessed on XXX, offers directories of downloadable
digitally-encoded files containing sound recordings. The vast majority of
these sound recordings are owned by our member companies, including songs by
such artists as XXX. We have a good faith belief that the above-described
activity is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
We assert that the information in this notification is accurate, based upon
the data available to us.
The system provided at the above IP address is almost identical to the
system Napster provides. You may be aware that the United States Circuit
Court for Ninth Circuit, District of California issued a ruling in RIAA's
lawsuit against Napster, finding that Napster is actively facilitating
widespread copyright infringement and, in doing so, directly affecting the
legitimate market for copyrighted works. The Ninth Circuit ruling upheld a
United States District Court's issuance of a preliminary injunction against
Napster. You may obtain a copy of the Ninth Circuit decision at
http://www.riaa.com/pdf/napsterdecision.pdf.
We request that you immediately remove or block access to the infringing
material offered via this server. In addition, we ask that you inform the
operator of this server about the illegality of his or her conduct and
confirm with the RIAA, in writing, that this activity has ceased.
This letter does not constitute a waiver of any right to recover damages
incurred by virtue of any such unauthorized activities, and such rights as
well as claims for other relief are expressly retained.
Finally, if you or your users wish additional information concerning
copyright law as it applies to sound recordings, please feel free to visit
and/or link to our web site at http://www.riaa.com.
You may contact me at RIAA, 1330 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Suite 300,
Washington, D.C., 20036, Tel. (202) 775-0101, or e-mail
antipiracy@riaa.com, to discuss this notice. We await your response.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Whitehead
Anti-Piracy Counsel
RIAA
How about this: the judge had a magic photocopier than could copy anything perfectly, and everyone went over to your house and photocopied everything you own, leaving the original in your house unharmed.
But you didn't like that, because you have a magic photocopier too. You wanted to photocopy all of your stuff at a cost of $~0.30 to you, and sell the copies at the full retail cost of the originals. Because you believe that don't just own the toaster, you insist that you own the idea of the toaster.
Jordan Bettis
``Wherever you go, there's another stupid sigfile quote.''"...some of the servers are located overseas ... it will be more difficult to enforce compliance with a shutdown request".
Too damn right it will. Especially if no national laws are being broken in some of those countries.
So they'll have to make do with threats instead.
Gee, what happens when people get so tired of this nonsense that they just quit going to movies, watching TV, buying music, etc?
Will that ever happen? The cynical say "Never". But, at this rate, such commercial "entertainment" (a term I use loosely, usually preceded by the word 'mindless') will, in the not-too-distant future be affordable only by those who own and control it.
Maybe it's time we revert to the practice of people producing art because they are compelled to, not because they are paid to. When artists are paid only on commission, or for a live performance. That is, they earn their living like the rest of us, based solely on the merit of their work - as judged by others.
And don't anyone spout that tired old line about how no one will create without getting paid to do so. That would mean that no one, anywhere, ever created purely for the joy and satisfaction of seeing their imagination realized - not to mention such a theory invalidating the whole Free Software movement.
Art is not an endeavor in which one should expect to "Earn a living". It is a gift which the artist willingly and lovingly shares with others. His expected reward comes from self-satisfaction, and, hopefully, the appreciation of his audience.
Any artist who would give up his art because no one would pay for it, is most likely a very poor artist.
Or a fool.
~cm.
I don't remember there being a "U.S. Supreme Court decision against Napster" so if the RIAA's letter really did refrence it, there's some interesting legal points to be analyzed.
More likely this guy just confused that Circuit court that made the Napster ruling with the Supreme Court.
--
--
RumorsDaily
It's important to read The Appeals Court decision on Napster
This decision discusses Napster and contributory and vicarious copyright infringement. A key part:
Sig: My Latest Censorware Essay:What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
Sorry folks, this is a LONG one...
Well, this was nice. Got home from work to find this lovely message in my Inbox. Yep, you guessed it... the RIAA contacted me because of my li'l old opennap server. Actually, they contacted my ISP instead, and they were "kind" enough to forward it to me...
Well, I do have to give them some credit: at least they didn't summarily axe my connection like so many others did. Anyway, what was I to do? I can NOT afford to lose my DSL at this juncture, considering how I use it for EVERYTHING -- receiving email, hosting my website and several others (and some local nonprofits' websites), online gaming (of course :) ), etc. And I didn't really want to piss off my ISP, since decent connectivity is so hard to come by in this two-horse town. So I swallowed my pride and ran "killall -9 opennap" Sent them a nice "yes, I am ceasing and desisting" email, and got a response. End of story... or so I thought!
(Incidnetally, the phrase "unauthorized distribution of sound recordings" caught my eye... UHH, HELLO PEOPLE??! I was *NVER* actually SHARING any MP3's... my server only acts as a "gathering point" to connect everyone else who wants to trade files. This would be like the police raiding and shutting down an ENTIRE Shopping Mall just because some drug dealers happen to hang out there to ply their wares. DUHHHHHH!!!!)
Anyway, "Time passes..."
The time: Later that afternoon. The place: in my Command Center, ice cold can of Coke(tm) by my side. The activity: reading through my webserver logs. Why? Because I am a nosy bastard and like to know what people are doing on my webserver! :P (actually, I had just tweaked around my CGI's and installed some new ones the other day, and wanted to make sure everything was running happily)
Well, what do we have here? Someone at my ISP is happily reading through ALL of the websites that I host!!!
"Hmmmm... what's this? A deliberate and methodical browse through of my website? Someone trying to look for more infractions by me (not that I have any, my websites are all pretty boring and really poorly crafted...) Or maybe it's just someone who saw my URL in my .sig and was curious?" Well, I had my doubts...
(and, before you ask: yes, this is somebody in the ISP's office, not a random dialup user... A traceroute proves that.)
But later that day, my doubts were erased. There I was, happily cavorting around the new UO 3D betatest server (which ROCKS btw...), when all of a sudden my connection goes straight to hell. "Great, more OSI routing trouble, or maybe the beta server is clogged to capacity..." I think. Wrong, try again. Because then the firewall messages start flying:
Yes, boys and girls, a real honest to god portscan!!! Meanwhile, my bandwidth is going to hell in a handbasket with all the probing I'm getting. No, I am NOT happy about this. But is it the same guy? Hmm...
Yep, same guy.
There's some real nasty stuff going down out there...
--
Yomigaeru Aiyan Geek!!!
To: Piracy@RIAA.com
...
...
Mr. Whitehead,
The OpenNap efforts of many individuals are not about piracy. OpenNap only
indexes and allows easy searching of content already available online.
Instead of wasting your money going after servers and hosts, you should
target the individuals who host content.
Since the servers do not enable or promote piracy which was not already
available to other clients, they only index content, they do not have to
accept any terms given them by you. Of course there are more individuals
than there are servers, which explains your flawed strategy of attacking
OpenNap servers, because servers are not in violation of any legislation
only the clients sharing your files are.
I must question what RIAA has plans to do as more secure, anonymous,
sub-networks are developed that do not rely on single-host entities that
index content. RIAA is throwing money out the window in efforts to stop the
sharing of information.
Things are changing in today's world. Software is becoming free. Large
corporations are being turned upside down by the availability of that
software. Information is being made free, for all to use, not just the
people that have a big wallet. RIAA cannot accept these changes and RIAA's
business model is flawed in that it cannot deal with such changes. RIAA has
attempted to utilize the court systems to stop such changes in society, but
it will only hinder one aspect of it... that hinderance will lead to
stronger weapons against RIAA.... like Freenet. The massive media attention
RIAA has gotten from these series of bull-shit legal battles has lead to
RIAA's own destruction.
You have kicked the chair out from under you and now the rope has
tightened... it will be over in a few seconds.
-
It looks like 90% of the "legitimate" sound recordings in the United States
are being shared... something music was made for. Ohh my.
If I record the sound of my own fart, will it be "legitimate" ? Probably
not... Why don't you write what you mean, instead of trying to scare people
off by saying they do illegitimate things and attempting to scare them with
legal terms and shit. If you want the people to listen, speak their
language. It is okay to cry sometimes and say "We have a failed business
model, we need to find a better way to make money besides sueing everyone
up-the-butt for excessive amounts of money that will never be paid."
Sorry to say this, but
Get a new job, Mr. Whitehead.
--
Your friendly mentor,
x-empt
Ever need an online dictionary?