Slashdot Mirror
Copyright.net Springs Into Action
Mynn writes "Tennesean.com is reporting that copyright.net is now operational." There's another story about copyright.net at siliconvalley.com. Supposedly they just banned 350,000 Napster users on the basis of title scans - obviously they didn't listen to one million mp3 files to make sure they were actually such-and-such a song, that would take years. Sure, this may be a little overbroad - you'll run into situations like the one described here (in German - use a translator), where a webpage offering mp3 files was attacked, except that the *.mp3 files were just text files with the cryptic letters "*aetsch*" in them - but who cares, they're just Napster users, they probably did something bad, right?
The board of directors of copyright.net appear to all have experience in the recording/publishing industry. Some of them were record label execs.
http://www.copyright.net/copyrightnet/cg_board.cf
I just thought that was interesting. Who's side are they on?
You better believe it. And a really poor search formula at that.
One of my friends wrote a techno song about, well, gerbiling. You know, the tube, the gerbil (named Raggot in one legend), the stuffing...
He renamed it "Metallica - One Gerbil Too Many", and put it up on Napster. He was banned. Not only does the banner bot not check the song itself or the id3 tags, it's pretty poor at figuring out song titles.
What do I do, when it seems I relate to Judas more than You?
Still not dead.
Their page for Napster users asks you to give your email address, Napster name, and full personal details before telling you what they will do for you and if it costs anything.
None of the links from their home page lead anywhere which would clarify matters.
While I was not blocked by them, this policy of "taking names" at the front door sure scared me away from seeing what they propose to do for me.
Well, duh. 99.99% of Napster users use Napster to locate copyrighted information and download it in a fashion illegal under current copyright law. A very small minority of these people don't; they're either really honest, trying to make some political point that nobody'll ever care about or are doing something worthwhile like trying to get their own music out there.
It's one thing to think that you ought to be able to share music, but I tire quickly of Napster users trying to pretend like they're legally in the right on this one; the self-rightousness of it makes me gag. Face it: more than likely, you're sharing music illegally. If you can't deal with that, don't do it.
Disclaimer: I get my music illegally. I do it because it's convenient and I'm cheap.
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
napster leaves some registry entries in your computer when they ban you. even if you uninstall napster these entries stay. I don't know exactly where they are but when I got banned (by rage against the machine's management..) it wasn't too hard to find a site giving instructions on getting napster back up and running (I think it was www.fixnapster.com). Anyway, I have a static IP and can still connect so they don't ban based on that.. its just based on your account name and some reg. entries.
(somewhat) Seriously though .... maybe it's time to set up copyleft.net to send out lawyer's letters about GPL violations ..... :-)
I realize there's a certain culture in the geek demographic that says functionality is more important than form: just look at how open source software focuses on getting the job done and doesn't pay much attention at all to how ugly it is while doing so.
But it's important not just to behave legally. It's important not to give the appearance that you're behaving illegally. Much of law is based solely on appearances: the whole issue of "probable cause" is based on the police's perception of criminal wrongdoing, not the actuality of those criminal act. Usually the matter gets sorted out eventually, but only after a period of invasion and confiscation.
If you're a little more careful, you can avoid these sorts of surveillance. If you're doing wrong by illegally sharing IP, then why are you doing it out in the open? What kind of example does that set? And what can you possibly expect others to do on your behalf when you finally get caught as these did?
Maybe some education is in order, here. Geeks need to learn from marketers and lawyers that appearances do count for something in this world--maybe it should be a required course in all engineering and computer-science majors. The only alternative is learning it at the hands of the police. And nobody wants that.
Read the rest of this comment...
I've decided to learn more programming and get my butt in gear. If I can't control what's on my personal computer, there's no point in having one.
What we need is something that encrypts all data with an OS that works off the front end and decrypts within software. This is more practical now that Processors have hundreds of MHZ to waste. (unless you're like me and running distributed.net on the side) -
For example, you burn your favorite CD to your computer as MP3 (as I do) - then you encrypt the files (like PGP disk) - and the Winamp player decrypts them in memory and plays them out.
No HD copy protection can target it, cause they don't recognize it encrypted. Napster can't ban it, cause you can't identify the file (except by name....but hell, you can get around that) - No one can take your DeCSS away, cause they don't know what it is, and they can't ask you to take down something they can't identify. No one can suopena your HD and look for their stuff.
Screw distributed and Freenet...Let's find ways to secure what we have instead of tucking tail and spamming newsgroups.
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ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
Since I don't recall giving anyone from any of these "services" the right to search my hard drive, I wonder if there is a case for illegal search as they claim to have the "ability" to search my HD without my knowledge (or consent).
You're using her as bait, Master!
IIRC, Napster explicitly states that bots are not to be run on the service. Assuming that copyright.net doesn't have enough employees to do manual searches against 350,000 users, wouldn't they have had to employ a bot? Shouldn't their napster account have been removed? Why didn't the napster server pick up the bot activity?
The German link is about the Swiss RIAA counterpart asking a site owner (1) to remove some MP3 files, (2) to pay ~ USD 500 and to (3) add a note that the site was closed by them.
However, the files are raw text and contain the string "aetsch", which means "gotcha" / "serves you right" / "see". So someone had them on...
"CATS" and you live in "ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US", I guess I just gave away your user information.
--Perianwyr Stormcrow
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Since when is it a copyright violation to possess mp3's of cd's I own? I can see users getting banned for downloading copyrighted content, but if I simply checkthe box to search my hard drive, napter automatically shares every mp3 on my drive, including legitimate mp3's created from my own cd's. I don't see how this is a violation of copyright law, as having these mp3's is covered by fair use.
[wakko@wakko] 8:59:55pm ~> nmap www.copyright.net
Starting nmap V. 2.12 by Fyodor (fyodor@dhp.com, www.insecure.org/nmap/)
Interesting ports on 83-216.205.94.dellhost.com (216.205.94.83):
Port State Protocol Service
13 open tcp daytime
21 open tcp ftp
25 open tcp smtp
37 open tcp time
80 open tcp http
111 open tcp sunrpc
135 open tcp loc-srv
199 open tcp smux
443 open tcp https
465 open tcp smtps
1032 open tcp iad3
1433 open tcp ms-sql-s
5631 open tcp pcanywhere
5800 open tcp vnc
6666 filtered tcp irc-serv
6667 filtered tcp irc
6668 filtered tcp irc
65301 open tcp pcanywhere
Have a blast.
--
* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I'll say this until I'm blue in the face.
Why hasn't anyone tried putting up anonymous p2p proxies yet? It would make it impossible for these snoop programs to find your IP address.
End of problem!
========================
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!
Translation:
MP3-Removal mistake at the Swiss Music Association (sf: basically the Swiss form of the RIAA)
The Swiss International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI)has missed the joke on a web site when it issued a letter formed like a removal request.
According to this letter the website had offered MP3's for download. In the letter sent to the webmaster Matthias Leisi, the IFPI had demanded to have the MP3's removed and a notice ("This Site is closed by IFPI Switzerland...") to be added to each page on the website.
In addition he was asked to pay a penalty of 500 Franken (sf: approx 300 US dollars) plus an additional 200 Franken for the investigation costs.
Alas, it appears the people responsible for the "investigation" did not put in much effort. If they had, they would surely have found out that the offending music files were not in fact real MP3 files but text files containing the word "*aetsch*" (sf: Got'ya, psych).
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This is translated to be accurate to content and "style" not necessarily sentence structure. There are likely to be a few grammatical errors and spellings mistakes in there.
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Jon - TheSpork
Some people (*cough*Slashdot editors*cough*) seem to be waffling on this whole copyright issue.
When company X goes after Napster, they complain that Napster isn't breaking any laws--only some of the users are. "Napster shouldn't be responsible for its users' actions," is the message we get.
When company Y goes after Napster users, they complain that they shouldn't be going after individual users, and should stick to the big fish to avoid pissing off consumers. "'Sharing' by individual users isn't a threat--it's commercial pirates the industry has to worry about," is what we hear in this case. These people also seem to think it's unfair to use technology to enforce copyright, but perfectly reasonable to use it to violate copyright.
So, which is it? Who should the RIAA prosecute: users or Napster? Or is the message that we should we get rid of copyright altogether? If so, what will replace it?
Let me rebut some common responses before they happen:
Most artists don't make money anyway!
Maybe so, but the possibility of "going big" motivates a lot of them. Then there's the fact that they need to eat and pay for recording studio time, etc. If they have to work a second job to support themselves, they'll have less time to produce music (which is clearly inefficient, if you know anything about economics).
The labels just produce crap like Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys
We think Britney and Backstreet are crap because we're not pre-teen girls. I bet they think our music sucks, too. You can get all snobish if you want, but the truth is that labels, being businesses, produce what consumers want. If consumers want crap, that's what they get, and lots of it. Sure, some good indie bands get missed, but a lot of others make it, and the ones that don't probably appeal to too small an audience to go big-time... If there were really this huge, untapped market for "good" music, then some new label would come along and clean up.
Music labels already rip off artists
True, the system is broken, but it at least gives some artists some money. It's better than nothing, and, until you come up with a better system, it's the only game in town.
But I do have a better system! It's the Street Performer Protocol
The SPP is flawed for many reasons. Even having payments held in escrow upon condition of delivery of the work doesn't solve most of them. The most obvious of these flaws is the free rider problem. Essentially, it's in your best interest to let others pay, and not pay yourself, since you'll thereby save money and gain the same benefit. It's all basic economics, but I'll rehash a bit of it here: People make decisions based on marginal gain and cost. If you "pay" under the SPP, you have only a very small chance of actually influencing the outcome, whereas you do have a significant cost (the amount paid). Fundamentally, without copyright and other forms of protection, intellectual property becomes a public good--it is neither excludable nor rival. Private industry nearly always underproduces public goods, without some form of intervention.
To see SPP failing in action, look at what happened to Stephen King. After the novelty wore off, not enough people paid. Fortunately, King released the next installment anyway.
As another example of a failure of SPP, why don't we all voluntarily donate money to the government to pay off the debt? We'd all benefit from it. Strangely, it's not happening. The only way the debt gets paid off is through taxes, which are a way of ensuring that everyone pays in some semi-fair fashion.
I'm not going to try to condense an entire economics course here, but I will recommend a book on the subject that's funny and happens also to be educational: Eat the Rich by P.J. O'Rourke.
I hope this provokes an intelligent debate, not a flame-fest. If you want to rebut my argument, please do, but please stay clear of ad hominem attacks. Obviously, I do have some bias, but I also recognize that the future of intellectual property poses a huge challenge, and one that nobody has solved. Any constructive input is welcome...
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
On the other side I'm kinda hoping that the RIAA shoots themselves in the foot (in the sense that napster probably boosts CD sales) and forces napster to filter out "illegal" mp3's - because then it will be a boon to the vastly under-rated unsigned artist community (who - if you know who you're looking for are really quite good)
Very good point! Perhaps Napster should spell that out in their TOS with details and sue. Damned if that wouldn't be hilarious!
This is a distortion of the truth. While it is technically true, probable cause must be based on a specific fact which is not just consistent with criminal behavior, but indicates that a particular crime has occurred.
There are many court cases which have established, as one author colorfully put it, that you cannot define "grand theft auto" as "six Chicanos in a Cadillac".
Let's be clear about this: Probable cause does not consist of being in a place where criminals hang out, of driving the kind of car they do, of dressing like they do, or of talking like they do or being of their race. All these things have been very clearly established by court challenges.
By this standard, which the DMCA and RIAA both violate, using Napster does not make you a violator, and neither does having files with particular song titles on your hard drive. Really only some kind of evidence that you downloaded a particular song at a particular time would suffice. Which means that what copyright.net is doing is illegal, and the provisions supporting them in the DMCA are illegal. But good luck getting our current pack of Supreme Court justices to agree. Dred Scott would have been proud of 'em, based on some of their recent activities.
I used to drive a very old Cadillac, and once I moved to the white-bread suburbs I got pulled over at least once a year for "weaving" just past the same donut shop about a mile from my house. I finally got rid of the car after the last cop tried to pick a fight with me when he realized I wasn't the drug dealer he thought he'd tagged. I never pursued it but this was highly illegal, because driving an old Cadillac through Mandeville at 3:00 AM is not, repeat not, probable cause. Thus the lame "weaving" excuse. I could have probably got a settlement out of them but it wasn't worth the effort, and then it was just over the top.
Oh, the cop who tried to pick a fight with me eventually succeeded in picking a fight with someone else. About a week later he was fired, and word was the city shelled out 6 figures + to the guy he baited. These laws about police limits aren't exercised frequently because it's such a pain to do so, but they do exist. And it sounds like copyright.net just added several hundred thousand crimes of a more serious nature to the long list of likely copyright infringements surrounding Napster's servers.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Um, because they'd sue your ISP for allowing you to host the proxy? All these folks who keep arguing that "the net routes around damage" live in a fantasy world- they presume that ISPs will always allow all packets to pass unfiltered and untouched. The ISPs don't really have much business interest in our freedom, or in routing around damage to our rights. If we just leave things up to our programming skills and the myth of the invincibility of the net, we'll lose everything we've built here, and fast.
So... what can you do about that? First and foremost, join the EFF. Run, don't walk, to that website, and make out as big a chunk of cash as you can. Second, run like hell to a book store and pick up Code and Other Laws Of Cyberspace. It isn't the best book, but it does give some very cogent arguments as to why "the net will protect itself" just doesn't cut it anymore. After that... well, after that, keep coding, I guess, and write your congressman when the issues do come up. This is going to be a long and uphill battle, but until we all move to an island nation that isn't intimated by the US and has abundant bandwidth, we can't just bury our heads in the sand.
~luge
IAAL,BIANLY
- Thanks to new software applications hitting the market, content providers are now able to track users that share music, movie and other media files across file-trading networks like Napster. Even Freenet -- the fiercely protective network -- appears to be vulnerable to the new programs.
So... they're claiming that they can find the IP of the Freenet computers that are hosting the MP3's, and ask that the files be removed?One service, Copyright Agent, allows content owners to provide ISPs with lists of files to remove and, in many cases, to have Internet access to certain users cut off completely.
"Our software all developed around the DMCA. We've Web-enabled the DMCA."
And in one of their officially attributed press releases:
Poof, this lone company suddenly solves the whole P2P problem.
Yeah, that's it.
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I wonder if there could be any legal response that could be sent to copyright.net which would cause them to spend more time per-user than would be economical...? Any lawers care to comment on this?
Even though I am slightly irritated that every discussion of legality must be accompanied by an IANAL disclaimer (you don't need to lay eggs to tell a bad one), IANAL.
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Pretty Woman still makes quite a bit of money for the estate, thanks to Van Halen's (and a few other) cover version.
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NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
In other words, you think they should switch to the service model. That does seem like a good option, but they would quickly be outcompeted by other "services" that didn't have the extra overhead of actually paying production costs and royalties to the artists.
Net result: Nobody makes any new music (commercially), since there's no money in it.
... not "should they go after Napster or should they go after the users".
If they want to sue their fans, let them.
The issue is that the criteria they're using is flawed, and they're making mistakes at best (suing people who are innocent) and committing perjury at worst.
If I have a filename "EnterSandman.mp3", is it:
1.) Metallica's Enter Sandman from the black album (copyright owner: Elektra Records)
2.) Metallica's Enter Sandman from a live concert which I recorded legally (Copyright owner: me)
3.) Metallica's Enter Sandman from a performance on the Grammy Awards (Copyright Owner: NARAS)
4.) Apocalyptica's Enter Sandman from their "Metallica by Four Cellos" CD (Copyright owner: Apocalyptica)
5.) A spoken word essay from someone saying how much they hate how Metallica sold out when they wrote pop metal (owner: that guy)
6.) a text file disguised as a Metallica MP3 (owner: the author)
7.) Britney Spears song to intentionally poison Metallica song-searches (Owner: britney spears)
If the file is anything other than #1, then whatever Metallica representative claimed copyright ownership in their affidavit (the DMCA notice is an affidavit) committed perjury, because they claimed to own the copyright on something they had no reason to believe they actually had the rights to.
Now this group may be able to act on behalf of the owners 1,4,7 and POSSIBLY 3 above, but the rest have all got nice counterclaims against copyright.net, possible sanctions, etc.
Simply culling lists looking for filenames and even looking for title info isn't enough. The copyright holder actually has to confirm that the file REALLY DOES contain their copyrighted work, or they're in a heap of trouble, and whenever someone goes after (n>100000) people, you have to know that nobody verified the copyright on each and every item.
D
I would argue that the opposite is true. People tend to form an emotional relationship with those whose music they like (just look at the amount fans spend on merchandising), that is much stronger than any relationship you might form with a waiter. If anything, voluntary payment will work better for music than it does for the service industry.
Your simplistic argument about public good, compares information to property, but the difference is that information costs effectively nothing to reproduce and distribute. Whether you force 100% of 10,000 people to pay for something, or whether 10% of 1,000,000 people pay one tenth of the amount, makes little difference to the producer of the information. Why not exploit the fact that the internet permits almost free distribution of your creative output, rather than using oppressive laws to prevent it from happening?
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When company X goes after Napster, they complain that Napster isn't breaking any laws--only some of the users are.
True so far...
When company Y goes after Napster users, they complain that they shouldn't be going after individual users
Where? Certainly not in this article.
The complaint is not that someone is going after Napster Users, but that they're illegally going after Napster Users, by violating their civil rights ("Innocent until proven guilty.")
In essence, "company Y" is saying that it's OK for them to break the law, but it's not OK for the Napster users to do the same.
Please don't distort the truth.
(And it's a sad, sad, day when a troll gets modded up to +5 as "informative")
It's simply impossible to write an algorithm that would allow the general public to access the information and/or the title without allowing RIAA and others the same information. To the extent that RIAA (and/or Napster's enforcement--if they really cared enough to try) is incapable of reading or understanding what a file is, so to is the public. In other words, it's entirely self-defeating when it comes to distribution.
Distribution is really the only key point at the present moment. This "method", if you might call it that, simply CANNOT address this problem.
As for HD copy protection, it makes little sense either. First, I believe most of these HD copy protection methods do not try to magically determine copyrighted material, rather they take specifically encrypted and tagged copyrighted material and try to prevent the user from committing unallowed actions on it (such as copying the file in question). So the only trick is just getting a "raw" copy, encryption is pointless. Second, even if HD copy protection really tries to play Big Brother, just about any number of existing encryption techniques could cover it just as well as this "method", in any event.
As for your vague DeCSS and subpoena statements, these come down to the same logical issues. If you are capable of decrypting the materials manually, the courts can compel you to release the key. Even if you claim that you can't retrieve the key for some reason, what's to stop the court from simply confiscating the material until you do, since you can't read it anyways? If your software does the decoding for you, it must contain the means to decode it. I don't see how it is logically possible to hide a key or the algorithm in such a way that only the software can get to it. In fact, it seems pretty much impossible. You might be able to do some things to the slight of hand, but not be truely secure.
Is there any possible and novel proposition here? I simply don't see any.
There, they are told specifically why they were kicked off Napster and offered copyright-protected versions of the Orbison songs, which cost less than a dollar. These specially encrypted versions can be sent to other users, but they can be played just twice, at which point a message invites them to buy a copy.
What is to prevent someone from creating a client that will save the original file in a backup. Play it once then restore from backup. How can they protect against a bitwise copy?
Any Ideas?
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
Right. And I respectfully disagree that they'd be outcompeted by other services, since even Napster couldn't run without some income forever. (I'm not convinced they'd last long even without the RIAA.)
Let's say Napster and Sonyster each decide to charge $5/mo for unlimited access. They have the same overhead, except Sony also has to pay production costs and royalties to artists. Without the ability to prevent others from stealing your creations, the most successful businesses are the "leaches" that create nothing.
And whether they like the service model or not, that's the only model there's going to be.
I think you're probably right here.
I also dispute that true artists wouldn't make music because "there's no money in it." The world would be better off without the "artists" so motivated, IMHO.
For the sake of argument, I'll accept your premise that all good artists are motivated by things other than money. Even so, we'll still get more good music by paying artists. If we don't pay them, then they have to work a second job to pay for food and expenses, and will have less time to produce music. Assuming the number of "true" artists is fixed, eliminating artist compensation will reduce the amount of music out there, which is a bad thing.
In reality, I suspect that most artists are motivated by a mix of factors that includes desire for fame, joy of creating music, and making money. Almost everyone is a little greedy, either for money, fame, or power. Thus, the effects eliminating artist compensation could be larger that your premise (non-greedy artists) would suggest.
The basic issue is that the Napster system allows for an artist's work to be 'used' without any control system whatsoever. This is not listening on a record station (and them recording) or buying and then ripping for your personal pleasure (used as an example of 'fair use'). This is flat out intellectual property theft.
Having said that, what copyright.net is doing is nothing less than throwing gasoline on the raging fire. I don't trade on Napster based on my beliefs, and have stated those beliefs in the past. But that does not give me the right to use the kind of crude act that copyright.net uses to force my views down everybody elses throat.
Copyright.net is a far greater threat to the resolution of this entire issue than Napster ever was. They need to be taken down, preferably by legal means, and Tim Smith, copyright.net's chief executive, needs to have a new asshole ripped. His comment that he's not trying to antagonise anybody is pure bullshit. I've never seen a troll site before, but copyright.net sure fits my definition of one.
I don't really care about napster itself.
What I do care is the newer draconian user-controlling legistlation like the DMCA. Copyright cannot be enforced without destroying the first amendment and concurrently destroying the concept of 'innocent until proven guilty'.
As they said, 300,000 users were banned from Napster, just based on song title. That's almost as stupid as blocking a website because it has the word 'breast' in it. (Like a cooking website talking about turkey's). This is WRONG.
Then you have the DMCA, whose purpose is to legistlatively and legally ensure that an obsolescent industry can preserve their former way of doing business, with the first amendment be damned. Fair use exists to resolve the conflict between the Copyright clause, banning speech, and the first amendment, allowing speech.
A 'copy-control' box cannot identify the difference between fair use, and unauthorized duplication. It cannot now and never will. Such a box is literally a censorship box. Right now, these boxes (CSS/SDMI/Minidisc) censor uses which, while legitimate and legal, are deemed undesireable by the owner of the copyright, regardless of whether or not they're legal. In the future, who knows what might be censored? With encryption adding technical obsticles and the DMCA adding in a legal obsticle, there is no way bypass the restrictions and do the things that the first amendment says that you ARE allowed to do. It also allows a tyrant to censor whatever they want from their populace, at any time after publication. Just 'withdraw the keys'.
A world with every computer, hard drive, TV, VCR, player, or recorder supporting censorship is repulsive. So is a world where people are assumed guilty and banned without proof, without evidence.
I cannot see any REASONABLE way of resolving this conflict other than the removal or signifigant weakening of copyright. As an artist myself, I would love to have some other alternative. But it looks like me, like everyone else, will have to toss the dice and see what comes up.
If you can offer a reasonable and workable alternative, I'd love to hear one.
It's not a copyright violation to have the MP3s, but it is one to serve recording of other peoples' songs without their permission. And just because you "simply checked a box", that doesn't absolve you of responsibility.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
How long is the idea of a "common carrier" going to hold up? Not long, I don't think. Two reasons:
/those/ can be distributed without problems. Much, much greater impact than the traditional notion of common carrier.
1) With traditional notions of "common carrier", it was always easier to attack the source of the "problems" that were being transported. For example, you don't attack the USPS for mailing out Playboys because it is easier to shut down the Playboy printing presses. When everyone is a printing press, shutting down the press is hard, so attacking the carrier (i.e., the ISPs) will prove more practical, both for corporations looking for a pressure point and for legislators looking for an easy legal target.
2) The traditional common carriers (the mail and the phone service) have limited "criminal" impact, especially on large corporations. I mean, one guy with one phone or one mail box can only leak so many company secrets or transport so many stolen goods. The infinite copy powers and multiplication of distribution of the net radically change that equation. Imagine distributing the DeCSS code by a USPS letter, or the phone. The damage there is limited. You've seen what distributing it over the web has done- there are literally millions of copies of it floating around, and already there are multiple programs that use it. And
By the way, DMCA already has provisions that would force ISPs to install equipment that enforces copyright as soon as techniques to do it are invented. There hasn't yet been such a case, but you can guess from the fact that that provision has already been written and passed that Congress isn't going to come down on the side of the ISPs, no matter how badly they'd like to be common carriers.
~luge
IAAL,BIANLY
I couldn't help but notice one of the banner ads running on Copyright.net looked an awful lot like the trademark of the gaming company Terminal Reality. Here's a comparison for you:
12k GIF
Perhaps we should report these guys to themselves?
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But if Sonyster's paying the artists and Napster isn't, they'd have the recordings first. This would enable Sony to charge more, and even delay the propagation of "their" songs to Napster for a few hours by creating a proprietary client that wouldn't facilitate automatic mirroring.
:-)
Six minutes after the Grammies, Eminem & Elton John's performance was on Napster. I rest my case
I agree with this suspicion--it probably comes down to this: in the large, people aren't altruistic. There's some kind of self interest--it may be in the form of "warm fuzzies" rather than money, but the person still "gets something" for his/her efforts. I don't really know whether there'd be less real artists, but I am hopeful that they would not only continue to exist, but flourish, being supported by a willing base of patrons rather than through a small percentage of the fruits of systematic intellectual "property" extortion.
I used to think so, too, but the failure of Fairtunes to generate any real revenue for artists ($7000 over 8 months?) has left me disillusioned.
The Heise article was mangled thusly:
MP3-Abmahnpanne with Swiss music federation
Swiss regional committee that Federation OF the Phonographic Industry ( IFPI) is international with a letter, which equals after German right of a warning, on a joke in the Web pleases. On the assumption, on a Website MP3-Dateien were offered to Matthias Leisi a letter, which requested it to remove the files for the Download, had been sent IFPI Switzerland to the operator. Additionally it should platzieren the note " This Site is closed by IFPI Switzerland... " on the pages. A punishment of 500 Swiss Franconias is additional to pay - plus 200 Franconias for the determination.
However the editors do not seem to have given oneself much trouble with the " determination " particularly. Otherwise it would have surely noticed to them that it concerned with the alleged music pieces not around genuine MP3-Files, but text files, which contained only the word " * aetsch * ".
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About that last claim: I can't find anything to back it up. It may not have been in the DMCA, which may be why I can't find it, but I know I've read about it anyway. Regardless, DMCA stamps pretty squarely on the face of "common carrier": as an ISP, anytime you are served notice that a user has infringing content, you have to immediately (or as soon as possible) take that content off the net. This is the "big deal" at copyright.net- they've automated this process, so that for the big ISPs, instead of the occasional letter from a copyright owner, they can now be swamped by hundreds or thousands of these notifications. And there is nothing the ISP can do except notify the user and start taking the content down. Note that the burden of proof here is not on the copyright owner or the ISP; all the copyright owner has to do is "swear" (via copyright.net's automated tools) that the user has distributed copyrighted materials and the user then has the burden of proving otherwise. I'm still trying to find a good summary of the impact- most are either way, way too dense (this one) or a little too light weight. Grr.
IAAL,BIANLY
They can ban me from Napster all they want. Every time I get on, I choose a new username, and put in a fake email address. This is just another example of clueless industry execs trying to stop a deluge with a cork. Sorry, guys. You're never going to be able to effectively stop music (or any kind of media swapping) on the Net. Execuse me, I've got to go get another Dido track now...
How can you ban/blacklist anybody based solely upon the title of a file. Other than "absolutely nothing", what does the name of a file have to do with the contents of that file? If I really wanted to host Metallica files on Napster, I would name them all "Little_Bo_Peep_Sings_The_Blues.mp3" and then advertise on a webpage/usenet that the above file is actually "Master of Puppets by Metallica".
Their search engines would be absolutely useless in the previous scenario. Not to mention the case of banning people based upon a filename, when the contents of the file itself are completely benign.
This is a pretty bogus way of searching for "bad" people on Naptser, and goes to prove that the whole notion of scanning what users are trading is totally impossible. They don't have the resources available to audibly analyze every file in their system to determine if it is RIAA owned material or not, and have to make assumptions. However, those assumptions completely negate any claim they have in court.
"Yes your honor, they did catch me hosting a file called "Master_of_puppets.mp3" on Napster, but it was really a recording of my little sister burping... I swear. They just assumed it was a copyrighted song."
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Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
The one issue is that Roy Orbison (The Big Bopper) passed away a long time ago
Which means his music won't come out of copyright until 71 years after such "long time ago." And the courts have upheld Congress's power to extend that by 20 years every 20 years.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The prosecution in a court of law would have to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you had Knowledge and Intent
You're mistaken here. The "beyond reasonable doubt" standard (which became a household word during the Simpson trial) is from criminal law. The vast majority of copyright cases fall under civil law, where there has to be "a preponderance of evidence" (51%) that there was intent or just negligence. Failure to set up a strong firewall (e.g. OpenBSD patched every couple weeks) could be considered negligence.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Since when is it a copyright violation to possess mp3's of cd's I own?
It's not a copyright violation under 17 USC 107, as you mention. But it is a patent violation under United States law unless the encoder publisher has paid THOMSON multimedia $15K/year or $2.50/unit sold (whichever is greater). That means you, LAME users.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
renaming text files does not work
Have you ever used Wrapster?
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
12k GIF ... Perhaps we should report these guys to themselves (for infringing Terminal Reality's trademark)
I'd report you to copyright.net for posting a GIF, but copyright.net handles only copyrights, not patents (on GIF's LZW compression) or trademarks (on the Terminal Reality logo).
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
What about the many thousands of parody tracks available? (e.g. "Lasagne", a take-off of "La Bamba")
"Lasagna" by Weird Al Yankovic appeared on the album "Even Worse" which is under Bono Act perpetual copyright. Most parodies came off either some comedy album, SNL, MADtv, Howard Stern, or the like and are copyrighted by their producers.
I'd say that Al Yankovic performed less than one-third of the songs attributed to him on Napster, but that's another node.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
"BECAUSE IT'S THE LAW"
And what law would that be? I was not aware that corporations requesting that Napster ban users for offering copyrighted music requires absolute proof. Perhaps you are, in fact, referring to laws that restrict the govenment of the united states, and not the corporations found within.
This is not harassment, it is a legitimate application of Napster's terms of service.
Yeah, I have heard about this thing called Napster...someday I might check it out for nostalgia, like the Atari 2600 emulator I have or something. Wasn't Napster, like, some kind of music program for the first 286s? Or maybe it was programmed by that one Navy Lady who coined the term bug? I think I heard about it in a computer history textbook, or something.
Gnutella for the 3rd milenium!
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
First, how many people have heard of FairTunes, let alone trust it to get money to the artists?
They're actually pretty good--you can check the status of all your donations, and they post scans of cashed checks on their website. If you're really paranoid, you can email the artist to confirm. They've gotten a fair amount of media coverage, at least in Canada. It's really my ideal payment system, but, unfortunately, nobody uses it.
Second, you are making the mistake of assuming that low-quality MP3 files are what music fans want for their main copy of an album.
128 KBps MP3s are only the beginning. As people Get a Clue, they'll start ripping at 256 KBps, and the quality will become indistinguishable from CD. Napster or its successors will probably evolve to distribute cover art and liner notes, too. With CD burners becoming standard in consumer computers (see the new iMacs) and easy to use (check out iTunes), there will be no reason to buy a CD. The record companies know this, which is why they're freaking out now even thought it's not hurting them yet. They'd be stupid to wait until they were losing milliions a year and it was too late to stop.
Bluntly speaking, they don't happen to be that well known. If someone doesn't know about a given restaurant, they're not going to be a patron of it now are they? Same goes for any other business.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I seem to remember something written about 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'. I dunno about you, but using Napster seems to fall into that third category there.
If you discount that argument, then I challenge you to find the right to 'walk down the street' in the Constitution in anything other than generalities like the 9th and 10th Amendments. And last I checked, using the legal system as a club to get something you want that doesn't have anything to do with the law is itself a crime. The RIAA wants Napster dead, and it will do anything, legal or illegal, to accomplish its goals, including (ab)using the legal system.
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At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
Its copyright, as in, the rights to copy.
Ok. You are not a pirate because you bought all the music you own.
But I am a pirate because I downloaded Nirvana songs without paying for them. (This is literally the full extent of my pirated music, but I still maintain that I am, indeed, a pirate) And I were a betting man I'd wager that most of the people using napster have done the same thing at least once. That makes them pirates.
>>I don't believe you build a strong position by engaging in or supporting amoral or illegal acts (where the laws are legitimate).
I don't claim that this makes a good argument against the RIAA. I'm just saying people need to be honest with themselves.
I do feel sort of sad about trampling on the rights of Nirvana. But not bad enough to stop.
What I see happenning is that the RIAA will create ever more and more intrusive procedures to stop pirates like myself. So far, they have only sued people who host music. By next year we'll start to see them sueing people for downloading music as well as serving it.
I really, have no sympathy for the people who got banned from napster. That's the sort of punishment pirates deserve.
On the other hand, I think there is a valid limit to measure the RIAA should be allowed to take in order to stop pirates. Random harddrive searches and packet filtering etc we can all agree are wrong. Contacting the isp of every one who uses gnutella is shakier ground. Banning programs like Freenet is another example of something they could do.
It will be interesting to see how this all ends.
(btw, I'm hurt that someone moderated me redundant. Troll or flamebait, I could understand. Perhaps, it was some British person who thought redundant means "unemployed". I'll have you know that I have a great job working as bag boy at the local grocery store.)
Let's say on my web site I have some MP3 of my own band doing covers or parodies. Copyright.net gets my ISP to shut me down because there was a file called pretty_woman.mp3 on it. As a result my site is down for several days while I do who knows what to prove I am not ripping off a dead guy's old lady. I would imagine I would be able to sue copyright.net for this.
'Same speed C but faster'
This being said, I am not naive enough to pretend it's going to stop anything.... but if one should find a 'copyright.net' hit on a firewall and serve them with a cease-and-desist (for violating any number of privacy or computer abuse laws); it just may cause Them to reconsider their operations.
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2) People still tip even if they don't expect to return to a restaurant
3) Just because one example of a non-funded, low-profile, voluntary payment mechanism hasn't been a success yet, does not justify a dismissal of the whole idea.
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