MPAA Goes After Gnutella

President of The US writes "C|Net is reporting that the MPAA is going after individual users of Gnutella through their ISPs. 'What we're trying to do is educate the population about what is appropriate, both from an ethical standpoint and from a legal standpoint,' is what they are saying, but it looks like more of the usual intimidation tactics. It looks like they want to scare individual users from even trying to share movies, for fear they will be cut off from their precious broadband. Will the ISPs cave in?" Yes, they will. But its gonna be interesting to see where this goes.

Comments

This should be in the Slashdot faq...

[roystgnr]

Paradox: Slashdot has continually said that the MPAA should got after individual copyright infrigers rather than services like Napster. Yet as soon as the MPAA does that it becomes labelled "intimidation tactics".

Answer: There is no Slashdot.

At least, not in the sense you mean. There are hundreds of thousands of readers here, tens of thousands of occasional posters. We do not agree on everything. Slashdot does not march in lockstep with libertarianism, communism, or whatever gestalt you think you have assembled from hundreds of people shouting at each other every day.

In this case in particular, a large number of Slashdot readers apparantly believe that copyright violation is wrong, but that copyright violators should be individually punished, not the authors, possessors (DeCSS), or providers (Napster) of tools they happen to use. I fall into this category, for example. On the other hand, there are a large number of Slashdot readers who believe that "intellectual property" isn't property, and that because copyright violation isn't theft it isn't wrong. "President of the US" may be in this group.

There is no hypocrisy here, because the two groups do not overlap.

Re:It all comes down to Ethics.

[Croaker]

*snort*

Suppose you have written an essay or made an invention. Your intellectual work does not exist in a social vacuum. It would not have been possible without lots of earlier work - both intellectual and nonintellectual - by many other people.

So? everything is a social product. Let's say you manufacture something. You do not do this in a vacuum. You do pay the people who contribute directly, employees, supplies, etc. But, what about the guy that built the building that you work in, the guy who paved the road that you drive your products over, the folks who built the truck that you use to transport goods. Do you have to include them in a cut of your profits? Do they, therefore have the right to take your goods?

The answer is: no. Those people have already been compensated by you in some manner (you rent or bought the building, you paid taxes to get the road paved, you bought or rent the truck). In the case of intellectual property, why would we treat anything differently? The intellectual work performed by someone should be just as valid in the marketplace, and be justly reward, as phsyical labor.

The second point is utterly baffling. Let me get this straight: if you are a dull, plodding worker who punches a time card, by all means, you should benefit from your labor. However, if you're talented, gifted, or busted your ass to be able to creating something new, innovative, and popular... well, jack, you don't get squat for that.

What a load of horse shit. Who the hell is this Hettinger dweeb to decide that if I make a symphony, that I can't benefit from it monitarily? Because "natural talent" is involved? Does that mean that since I'm out of shape, I should get paid more to go dig a ditch than someone who's fit, since it is a lot easier for him? No, the end result is what we judge. In Hettinger's mind, for the greatest reward, I should find the job I'm least suited to do, and go struggle with it. Obvious idiocy.

From the practical, market standpoint, if we want to see more of something, like innovation, we reward it. Of course, the market isn't perfect. I think it's pretty obscene that someone playing a child's game ends up making more than several hundred teachers, who are responsible for educating our young. But, unless someone can wave a magic wand and remove the necessity for people to pay for food, shelter, and the other necessities, not to mention luxuries, we need to somehow compensate people for the intellectual work they do. The market is the only functional way we have found to do that. And to enable the market to work, we have to treat intellectual labor as if it were physical labor, within the bounds of copyright law.

The answer is obvious

[Outland Traveller]

The answer to this and other tantalizing questions is of course - privacy.

- Use freenet.
- Subscribe to a Zero-Knowledge type of service.
- Use trusted, logless proxies with SSL.

By default there's no privacy on today's internet, but the technology is there. So far the convenience factor has prevented most privacy technologies from achieving critical mass, but draconian content-control powergrabs by the MPAA and RIAA might just tip the balance.

what's the problem

[kaisyain]

Slashdot has continually said that the MPAA should got after individual copyright infrigers rather than services like Napster. Yet as soon as the MPAA does that it becomes labelled "intimidation tactics". I read the article and from what I gathered Excite@Home told people if they didn't stop sharing copyright material they would lose their service.

What, exactly, is the problem with that?

Re:Why is /. defending this?

[Hadean]

Sharing movies is illegal. If someone shares a movie, they aren't going to buy it. That's money lost for the makers. What's wrong with crime prevention.

I'll make sure never invite friends over to watch a movie I rented - since I'm sharing the movie with them and all... wouldn't want the multi-billionaires to be harmed by me not forcing my friends to cough up $4 each at Blockbluster...

Re:It all comes down to Ethics.

[Hard_Code]

"In the case of intellectual property, why would we treat anything differently?"

Please tell me how someone can have "compensated" any given artist, philosopher, writer, mathemetician, scientist, etc., etc., for something they invent. Markets are based on scarcity. Ideas are infinately duplicatable. Please show me a formula which generates a market value for an idea (no, as shown above, you can't use "effort", as a stupid person who works very hard, very long may create something a smart person could create in a much shorter time with much less effort).

"Who the hell is this Hettinger dweeb to decide that if I make a symphony, that I can't benefit from it monitarily?"

That's not what he's saying. He's just skeptical on the policy of granting a *monopoly* on that thing. A temporary monopoly probably *should* be created to generate incentive. However, total patent and copyright lengths are totally out of wack. What *possible* incentive could be conferred by copyrights which last 70 years **after the creator's death**?

Some people seem to think that a free market is some magic that solves all problems. "We don't *have* to deal with moral/ethical/social issues. The free market will decide!"

Why I love the Ack-Acks

[The Code Hog]

I love the Ack-Acks (RIAA/MPAA). They are doing a fine job panicking as people realize the current value of their service, and are attempting to hang on to their business model with a death grip.

Look, 60 million napster fans and who knows how many video downloaders have been hit in the face with the fact the margin cost (cost to reproduce) a CD is virtually nothing. A little more than virtually nothing to reproduce a DVD, just longer because of current bandwith issues. So they can legislate all they want, but people are now aware that the only value-add the Ack-Acks add is deliver a physical product from burn-in to your local Best Buy.

And Gee!, that's gonna be irrelevant to a large portion to the population in a few years -- legitimate or not, digital dupes of oves and songs WILL be available somewhere.

It *isn't* irrelevent yet because of technology limitations. Napster is rife with lousy recordings, bad bitrates, misnamed songs, etc. Movies take up to large a percentage of a users hard drive.

So why aren't the Ack-Acks pushing to explore new value-adds while they still have the upper hand. Wouldn't it be nice to go to amazon and select 10 songs, and order a custom CD (not MP3 version either, true blue uncompressed versions)? Or select music label appproved MP3's, where you now there are no artifacts , at a specified bitrate, for $1 a song? Choosing from 40 different version, some live, some different studio riffs?

People get it -- the copy of the Madonna (insert an artist you like here) album isn't worth $16 -- it's worth maybe $1. You know where the money in art has been, historically? Live performances! That means concerts for Music and movie theaters for movies.

The Ack-Acks don't get it.

Re:It all comes down to Ethics.

[psin psycle]

From Information Liberation

Edwin C. Hettinger has provided an insightful critique of the main arguments used to justify intellectual property, so it is worthwhile summarising his analysis. [12] He begins by noting the obvious argument against intellectual property, namely that sharing intellectual objects still allows the original possessor to use them. Therefore, the burden of proof should lie on those who argue for intellectual property.

The first argument for intellectual property is that people are entitled to the results of their labour. Hettinger's response is that not all the value of intellectual products is due to labour. Nor is the value of intellectual products due to the work of a single labourer, or any small group. Intellectual products are social products.

Suppose you have written an essay or made an invention. Your intellectual work does not exist in a social vacuum. It would not have been possible without lots of earlier work - both intellectual and nonintellectual - by many other people. This includes your teachers and parents. It includes the earlier authors and inventors who provided the foundation for your contribution. It also includes the many people who discussed and used ideas and techniques, at both theoretical and practical levels, and provided a cultural foundation for your contribution. It includes the people who built printing presses, laid telephone cables, built roads and buildings and in many other ways contributed to the "construction" of society. Many other people could be mentioned. The point is that any piece of intellectual work is always built on and is inconceivable without the prior work of numerous people.

Hettinger points out that the earlier contributors to the development of ideas are not present. Today's contributor therefore cannot validly claim full credit.

Is the market value of a piece of an intellectual product a reasonable indicator of a person's contribution? Certainly not. As noted by Hettinger and as will be discussed in the next section, markets only work once property rights have been established, so it is circular to argue that the market can be used to measure intellectual contributions. Hettinger summarises this point in this fashion: "The notion that a laborer is naturally entitled as a matter of right to receive the market value of her product is a myth. To what extent individual laborers should be allowed to receive the market value of their products is a question of social policy."

A related argument is that people have a right to possess and personally use what they develop. Hettinger's response is that this doesn't show that they deserve market values, nor that they should have a right to prevent others from using the invention.

A second major argument for intellectual property is that people deserve property rights because of their labour. This brings up the general issue of what people deserve, a topic that has been analysed by philosophers. Their usual conclusions go against what many people think is "common sense." Hettinger says that a fitting reward for labour should be proportionate to the person's effort, the risk taken and moral considerations. This sounds all right - but it is not proportionate to the value of the results of the labour, whether assessed through markets or by other criteria. This is because the value of intellectual work is affected by things not controlled by the worker, including luck and natural talent. Hettinger says "A person who is born with extraordinary natural talents, or who is extremely lucky, deserves nothing on the basis of these characteristics."

A musical genius like Mozart may make enormous contributions to society. But being born with enormous musical talents does not provide a justification for owning rights to musical compositions or performances. Likewise, the labour of developing a toy like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that becomes incredibly popular does not provide a justification for owning rights to all possible uses of turtle symbols.

What about a situation where one person works hard at a task and a second person with equal talent works less hard? Doesn't the first worker deserve more reward? Perhaps so, but property rights do not provide a suitable mechanism for allocating rewards. The market can give great rewards to the person who successfully claims property rights for a discovery, with little or nothing for the person who just missed out.

A third argument for intellectual property is that private property is a means for promoting privacy and a means for personal autonomy. Hettinger responds that privacy is protected by not revealing information, not by owning it. Trade secrets cannot be defended on the grounds of privacy, because corporations are not individuals. As for personal autonomy, copyrights and patents aren't required for this.

A fourth argument is that rights in intellectual property are needed to promote the creation of more ideas. The idea is that intellectual property gives financial incentives to produce ideas. Hettinger thinks that this is the only decent argument for intellectual property. He is still somewhat sceptical, though. He notes that the whole argument is built on a contradiction, namely that in order to promote the development of ideas, it is necessary to reduce people's freedom to use them. Copyrights and patents may encourage new ideas and innovations, but they also restrict others from using them freely.

This argument for intellectual property cannot be resolved without further investigation. Hettinger says that there needs to be an investigation of how long patents and copyrights should be granted, to determine an optimum period for promoting intellectual work.

Re:File Lending?

[flamingcow]

Please note that this (horribly overused) style of analogy is blatantly wrong; the reason that copyright infringement is not theft is that, unlike the car, the original owner does not lose their ability to use their property. A new user simply gains that ability. Things that have this property, such as anything that can be represented in a bitstream, should not be able to be owned. To try to enforce the laws of physical theft on such items is silly and is destined to fail.

Why is /. defending this?

[7days]

> it looks like they want to scare individual users from even trying to share movies,

And the problem here is?

Sharing movies is illegal. If someone shares a movie, they aren't going to buy it. That's money lost for the makers. What's wrong with crime prevention.

You don't get front-page articles on slashdot about people putting locks in shops to stop people to stealing the merchandise, so why should it be any different when try and stop other kinds of crime that costs money?

I don't understand why people are so defensive of pirates. I hear people talking about it all the time, and they don't feel in the least bit guilty about the fact that they're committing a criminal act.

Moreover, it's not simply a 'white-collar', victimless crime. Piracy does hurt people.

Games, which people constantly defend the pirating of, cost millions of dollars to create. Talented people put their very being into creating them. The same goes for movies.

How would you feel if something you'd spent 6-months of your life creating was being given away free?

And that a supposedly reputable website was defending this theft?

I can't see how people can object to actions that stop piracy - people seem to think no-one gets hurt by these things. They are wrong. The people working for record and computer companies have jobs and families too. And these are the ones that get hurt by the revenue lost.

It's never the big boss that gets hurt. Not Julia Roberts or Leonardo Di Caprio. It's the man who's packing the videos for $8/hour. It's the guy making them. He's the one losing the money.

These are the real victims of this crime, and I feel horrified that slashdot can condone it.

It all comes down to Ethics.

[ethics major]

In this the MPAA is quite correct; the issue of pirating music on gnutella, napster and so on is primarily an ethical one. People on this site like to pretend they are socking it to 'The Man', and that the issue is financial, and that the only people being harmed are the mulyinational recording companies (never mind the millions of small shareholders who have investments in them, ordinary people like you and I).

However, there is one small point missed here. That is hogwash.

The people most harmed are the musicians. When you pirate music, you are stealing from the artist who slaved to create it for you. Gnutella and Napster are theft on a huge and organised scale.

The fact that millions of ordinary Americans engage in this theft is no excuse - ethically and legally, it is wrong.

I have some friends in the recording industry here in Nova Scotia, who strive to make good folk music in the Scottish tradition. They sing in Gaelic. They are affected by napster, because it is a small market for such things. They can barely support themselves as it is, and are only kept afloat by sales of albums.

The final irony here is that the spread of napster and gnutella, and unauthorised piracy generally, would mean the collapse of such small outfits and an increase in musical homogenousness.

For the sake of variety and the small artist, I am on the side of the MPAA in this matter, for once.

If you think I am a troll, remember this:

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

-George Bernard Shaw, Annajanska.(1919)

Interesting court case...

[sllort]

MPAA: using dynamic IP xxx.yyy.zzz.aaa, user Bob was sharing the movie "Leonard Part VI" on 3/17/2000, at 6pm.

Bob: No I wasn't.

MPAA: We have ISP logs to prove that you were. They show your IP.

Bob: But IP's can be spoofed. Meet my expert witness...

They really can only enforce this if they raid your facility. I run gnotella at random times and IPs, and the HD that contains the stuff I share has a big electromagnet under it with a panic button, and is stored behind a door with a magnetic field generator.

That said, this is exactly what the MPAA should be doing. Not attacking the enablers, but attacking the actual movie fans themselves.

A Tribute To The Greats

[USian Pie]

USian Pie

A long, long time ago
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-- Chorus --
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It's been two years since the IPO
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When Spiral showed how it was done
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Somebody rooted Slashdot's host

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Your bud (George here) tried BSD
A dead Streetlawyer's tips were free
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We started singin....

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-- Chorus --