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Music Industry Raids Taiwan Campuses For MP3s
martijnd writes: "The Taipei Times newspaper reports that in Taiwan at least the music industry and police agree that possesion of illegal music must be as dangerous as having other substances hidden in your dorm room. In an attempt to stamp out MP3 file trading on campus the music industry is going after individual university students and has the police bring them in." The article says that some students are teaching others "techniques of erasing files without a trace, keeping hidden backup files, and even smashing one's own hard drive in the event of a police search in school dorms." Those sound like pretty good things to encourage anyhow to me.
They probably aren't doing this because they are very upset about MP3's, but because it is a demonstration that they are working to stamp out piracy.
-m
First, as has been mentioned by another poster, the government of Taiwan is under unbelievable pressure from the United States to enforce intellectual property rights laws. Somewhere around 30% of Taiwan's economy is based on the export of goods to the United States. Threatening trade relations is a remarkably effective stick to beat the government with.
In 1993, Taiwan passed a law protecting intellectual property rights. Here is a link to the English translation of the law if you are curious. The general understanding is that the text of this law was delivered from the American Institute in Taipei (the official unofficial embassy since the United States does not maintain formal relations with Taiwan), with instructions to pass it, as written, without ammendments or modifications, or suffer punitive tarrifs under Section 301 of the United States Trade Act of 1974.
Eight years ago, the issue was bootleg microchips. Now it's bootlegged MP3s. Little else in the basic dynamic has changed.
To condense a very deep topic into a paragraph, Chinese law enforcement is based the principle of "Sha Yi Jing Bai" -- kill one to warn a hundred. Rather than trying to consistiently enforce laws, the police excercise a crackdown mentality where a number of people are run in on the crime of the week, extremely harsh sentences are metted out to the few unlucky folks who have been caught, and then the usual state of barely controlled anarchy which makes up Chinese society resumes.
This promotes a lot more flaunting of the law than respect for it in my mind, but how can a gawailo like me comment on a legal system which has been using this technique for the last thousand years?
A final aspect of the legal system in Taiwan (and China to a great degree) is that you can apologize your way out of a lot of things. I suspect that very few of the students arrested will actually see any jail time for their sins. Most of them will act very contrite, and will be set free to go forth and sin no more.
Cheers!
j.
Many acknowledge that downloading illegal music from the Web is wrong but feel that students play only a tiny role in the larger problem of pirated music. The entrance of organized crime groups into the business of pirating music is perceived as far more serious.
They completely miss the real source of the problem. Bootlegs in Taiwan are plentiful and public, and there is no enforcement on the retail level. You can easily purchase a bootleg "collection" CD in any large department store. In this way, the whole "cheaper is better, regardless of source" concept is promulgated throughout society. If the IFPI is serious about decreasing profit margins, then they should attack the criminal organizations creating these that clearly violate Taiwanese copyright, not students that are engaging in what may actually be considered fair use under Taiwanese law. My impression is that the law there has not yet been clarified in that manner.
At least in the U.S., the CDs we buy in stores are bona fide copies. Now, I'm no fan of RIAA; I believe that they don't really serve a purpose other than to promote a monopolistic view for music, to keep the recording industry's profit margins nice and fat while the common artist is screwed.
But I sincerely hope that the RIAA doesn't start using the Gestapo tactics that the IFPI is using.
yours,
yours,
kbs
I have already had strange looks from people simply for mentioning MP3s in conversation. And people trying to tell me that copying from my own CDs to MP3s is illegal.
Looks like it's not going to be long before parents are searching their kids' HDs fof MP3s (hey, great product opportunity!) and government ads are coming out with moronic slogans.
"Friends don't let friend's use MP3s!"
"Every download is doing you damage!"
I remember reading an article (I think it was posted here on Slashdot) by a judge who argued there should be a way to legally define file deletion as a way of escaping legal consequences.
IE, if you find yourself in possession of something contraband, doing X would be the equivalent of burning it from a legal point of view.
Exploiting that concept...I wonder about the legality of the following things (pardon the Windows bias but hey, that's me)
1) Keeping your MP3/BombPlans/TeenPorn in the \RECYCLER folder on an NTFS volume. Note that under Windows NT, each user gets his or her own "Recycler Bin" (whereas they all share one common \RECYCLED folder on non-NTFS volumes). So, anything you put in the root of this folder is not deleted when you "Empty Recycle Bin". From a legal perspective, it seems possible you could say, "Hey, I dragged that all to the trash to delete it, don't blame me!" At the same time, all the files would be perfectly usable. Just have to clear your file histories to hide the fact that you are accessing the files there.
2) Same as #1 but actually putting them in the Recycle Bin...and disabling/teaching yourself not to ever empty it. Stronger case than #1 although you can't navigate folders and some programs give error messages when you try to use those files.
3) Have a hard disk that you do not use. "Delete" files...which in Windows land means the first letter of the file name is erased from the File Allocation Table. When you want to access the files, unerase them with a utility. As long as you don't write anything else to the drive while files are in "delete" state you can repeat this infinitely.
4) Write a program that automatically does #3 on the fly (Unerase D:\MP3, Open WinAmp, Play, Close WinAmp, Erase D:\MP3).
Seriously...would judges hold people accountable for files that were deleted? It seems worth considering...
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Their actions are nothing more than a form of legal terrorism. The only difference in my opinion between these industries (intellectual property) and the terrorists that have in the past struck fear in countless nations' civilian populations is the weapon of choice. For Osama Bin Laden and the like it is a bomb/gun, for these guys it is a court brief. The end result is the same: extreme response against those that are the weakest, most defenseless targets to send a message to the strong/rest of society saying that "none of you are safe from us, all of you are at our mercy." That my friends is how terrorism works. You don't strike the strongest, most visible targets in this case organizations like Philips Electronics for making stuff like mp3 cd players, you attack the small targets that everyone assumes are more or less outside the conflict.... the students in this case. Why do terrorists of all stripes do this? Simple: the more visibile targets usually have more than sufficient resources to retaliate in full force. Who here honestly thinks that if IBM were to make a lot of really good mp3 players and the like that the RIAA would dare take them on in court? IBM's annual revenues are probably at least 2x the entire recording industry's combined! So you go after the middle and lower class guys that you know will be forced to play russian roulette in that they have two options: submit and be forgiven for now, or fight for their rights and run the risk of paying off legal bills for the rest of their life and/or destroying their family's economic future. Finally one thing to keep in mind is that other industries don't behave this way when they are "robbed" by the public. Most other industries don't deceive themselves and their member companies' stockholders into equating not achieving the maximum profits with being victimized by thieves. The fact of the matter remains that even when other industries are affected by theft, they don't respond by lashing out at a great many of their potential customers. They isolate the problem few and deal with them and leave the rest out of it. That is the difference between an intelligent, shrewd corporate approach and the insanely stupid and self-defeating approach most intellectual property giants have. To the IP companies I say keep it up bozos, the more people you all go after, the less sympathy you all will have and the more contempt the average joe blow will hold you in.
2001
The RIAA is watching you.
MP3 police.
Who controls the internet controls the MP3s: who controls the law controls the internet.
Unfairuse
Doubleplusunfairuse
Riaasoc
You could create and share noise but not music.
We're getting the music into its final shape -- the shape it's going to have when nobody hears anything else. When we've finished with it, tpeople like you will have to learn music all over again. I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new music. But not a bit of it! We're destroying notes -- scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We're cutting the music down to the bone. The eleventh album won't contain a single note that will become obsolete before the year 2050.
You don't grasp the beauty of the destruction of notes. Do you know that Newmusic is the only music in the world whose repratrauer gets smaller every year?
It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of notes.
Don't you see that the whole aim of Newmusic is to narrow the range of thought? In the end, we shall make musicrime literally impossible, because there will be no notes in which to express it. Every song that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one note, with its tone rigidly defined and all its subsidiary tones rubbed out and forgotten.
Every year fewer and fewer notes, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or ecuxe for committing musicrime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need for event hat. The Revolution will be complete when the music is perfect. Newmusic is Riaasoc and Riaasoc is Newmusic. Has it ever occured to you that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be able to understand 'music' wuch as we are listening to now?
The whole climate of music will be different. In fact there will be no music, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not hearing notes -- not needing to hear notes. Orthododxy is unconsciousness. Soon, people will buy CD-albums which are blank.
Duckmusic, to quack music like a duck. It is one of those interesting words that have two contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent(such as Napster), it is absue, applied to someone you agree with, it is praise.
Two minutes hate.
It was terribly dangerous to let your singing wonder when you were in any public place or within the range of the Riaascreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxeity, a habit of muttering to yourself -- anything that could give you away...Even to wear an improper expression on your face when a victory against napster was announced, was a punishable offence. There was even a word for it under the Newmusic order: facecrime, it was called.
Everything faded into mist. The past music was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.
Napster was a fragment of the abolished past
In the end the RIAA would announce that a sharp was a flat, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I am drawing several similarities between this and the case against Kevin Mitnick.
"Let's single out somone and beat them into the ground with lawsuits, jail etc... and soon people will be afraid to cross us. We Rule!" The Music Industry.
We live in a strange world, and it keeps getting BETTER!
Arathres
I love my iBook. I use it to run Linux!
stainless steel
I have NO doubt in my mind whatsoever that these terrorist raid tactics used in Taiwan is nothing but a dress rehearsal for what they want to start doing in the US.
And I have one question: Even IF the RIAA busts into your apartment and seizes your hard drive full of MP3's, HOW can they prove that they aren't tracks you made from music that you had bought? Even if they WERENT? I have yet to see a CD or casette come with a software like "shrink wrap EULA" that states that you have to keep the license and originals as proof of purchase.
After all, there is a well established, Constitutionally protected right of "fair use" (though being eroded constantly by moronc Federal "judges" (Kaplan) and illegal statutory law (DMCA).
Also, in the USA, you are legally innocent UNTIL they prove you guilty beyond a REASONABLE doubt. They have to PROVE that you didn't make those MP3's from stuff you'd bought over the years, but may not have kept the originals. Thus it seems likely that it would be hard to make any such case stick, unless they could seize logs or something that showed you using Napster.
However, as we well know, the corpers are writing the laws and are paying the lawyers who become judges (Kaplan). Just as the DeCSS case verdict was irrational, Constitutionally illegal, and indefensible (as was Kaplan's conflicted conduct), there is sure to be a RIAA vs. Joe Napster user that will be just as stupid.
What is happening, IMO, is the RIAA is trying to establish a precedent somewhere, that they can then con some local or Federal jackboots into following HERE, to treat people who have MP3's like drug dealers and software Warez sellers.
If this starts happening here, well, now you anti-gun ownership people understand the argument that I and others make for the reason BEHIND the fact that the Founders included the right to "keep and bear arms" right in the second amendment. The right to bear arms is intended to keep the government in line, and within the law.
To be honest, though, I wonder if the RIAA realizes what would happen if they started such raids in the USA? I think there would be a CONSIDERABLE public backlash against them.
Or maybe I'm putting too much faith in the sheep masses who keep voting for the same two (one) party system all the time. The same parties that are so similar in their desire to kowtow to the corpers that they unanimously, and secretly, voice voted in the DMCA.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
First of all thats a shitty case to reference as Kevin was blatantly committing crimes. Sure the government pounded law after law after law on Kevin but he is no martyr nor should he be treated as one.
I totally disagree with him getting shafted on a trial for so long, and one of the things I blame on society is their lack of knowledge regarding computer crimes, etc., etc., and the so called "jury of your peers" bs.
Referencing Kevin is like a pro doo hickey radical coming here, and saying something like "Well Timothy McVeigh was right to think that be committing his crime, he would make those aware of the bs gov is spewing on groups like those in Waco" or something like that.
Kevin was a criminal no one gave him permission to go into any of those networks, had it been a flip side situation where he was contemplating selling information he garnered, (which no one but him will ever know) people would've called for harsh sentencing.
360 degrees of Karma
I'm sure they will find a way to evade the athorities. I just hope it isn't a sony memory stick somewhere where the sun don't shine.