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Aimster Seeks Protection From RIAA Demands
LogicalRealism writes: "In a preemptive move to keep itself from sharing Napster's fate, Aimster has filed for a declaratory judgement to say that its service does not violate U.S. copyright law. The Recording Industry Association of America sent a letter to Aimster, requesting them to begin filtering the files shared on the service. Aimster contends that to filter files shared privately between its users would be inappropriate. C|Net has the story."
This would be like the telephone company getting on the phone and listening to your phone calls so that when you read a copyrighted bedtime story to your daughter they can disconnect you for copyright violation. That's exactly what the RIAA wants to do. Cut off fair use communication between individuals unless we (or our communications provider) has paid their fee. Who needs the government when the media companies can tax us?
Extra: RIAA calls for ISP-wide, packet-level filtering of copyrighted content.
Extra: RIAA calls for limited ban on transfer of encrypted data, citing "serious difficulties identifying pirates". RIAA lawyer Goethe Bigballs says the DMCA should be ammended to prohibit the use of encryption technology by individuals while affording conglomerates maximum protection under the law.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
This is pretty funny.
Now...who wants to create a css plugin for my email client so I can use it to legitimately protect my copyrighted correspondence (say, samples of my bad poetry) to select friends? That way, I can legally have decss to UNencrypt my own messages. Or is there some rule that ONLY the MPAA can use CSS? W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I find it both amusing and profoundly irritating that Copyright Cartel Apologists continue to engage in their use of "newspeak" to promote their corporate agendas.
Copyright violation is not stealing. It is not theft. It is not piracy. It is copyright violation. Even a quick reading of the law, and of court decisions, makes this abundantly obvious to the most casual of observers. There is a reason for this, and I'll say it again (since there seem to be so many thick headed people who can't keep their terminology even remotely straight): copyright violation is not even remotely similiar to theft. Theft and stealing deny the victim the original product (it is "taken away" from the victim). If I steal a car, the owner will find themself walking (or hopping a cab) home after their visit to the local precinct to report the crime. If I replicate the car and drive off in the copy, the owner is denied nothing. Nor is the manufacturer. Yes, the manufacturer will scream that my unauthorized replication of the car has denied them much needed profits, profits based on a business model that predated widespread replicator use, but that is hardly theft. It is nothing more than sour grapes because their business model has become obsolete and they are either going to have to change those business models or look for another line of work.
Of course they will use their existing capital to buy legislation from congress to protect their business model, just as the existing Copyright Cartels have done now that widespread information replicators (read: computers) are in use. And of course our congress, which routinely sells itself to anyone with cash like cheap whores, will readily oblige.
That changes nothing. Copyright violation is indeed a crime (and a rather synthetic one at that), with its own definitions, and its own set of punishments (which don't really resemble the definitions or punishments of theft at all, much less piracy on the high seas). I'm sure that once nano technology allows widespread replication of material goods, providing the promise of prosperity for every human being on the planet, these same "intellectual" property laws will be used to keep the masses impoverished and beholden to an oligarchy of outdated corporations, exactly as they are doing to our artistic culture today.
Even then, by no rational defintion, will unauthorized replication be even remotely akin to theft, just as copyright violation has nothing whatsoever to do with stealing or piracy, except in the minds of those whose limited imaginations and limitless greed compell them to do all they can to keep the (western) world in a state of cultural impoverishment.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Refusing taxation without representation is wrong because it denies the king the money he would've gotten had you given it to him.
That statement is just as stupidly circular as the one you just made about the car dealer.
If you had made some mention of the car designer, and how the car designer had now spent all that time designing and building this new car and didn't get a dime because everybody just replicated it, you'd have something.
But, that argument doesn't really help RIAA all that much because they're the car dealer, not the car designer.
The solution to this mess is for the car designer to refuse to design a car unless she gets money for it. If car designers all over consistently did this, some system would arise by which they would be compensated for designing cars, at least, if people wanted new car designs.
Copyright and patent law are currently the tools we use to accomplish this. They are based on tying the design cost into the cost of replication. They are predicated on the idea that replication facilities are expensive. They are becoming obsolete for larger and larger swaths of goods that are currently sold.
Attempting to keep them around seems to me to be like making sure that horse-drawn buggies still have the undisputed right-of-way on all roads and to insist that cars not go above 15 MPH. Technology has changed. The law is obsolete. It's time to move on and find something better.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
This is the tactical downside of sending demand letters. Depending how the letter is worded (and RIAA has been going more for subjective effect on the subject than legal benefit, based on the letters posted to the net), the letter doesn't create any meaningful downside for the prospective defendant, while giving the defendant options he didn't have before.
Aimster is, in effect, suing on the letter, saying it has created doubt as to the rights of the parties. Had RIAA sued, rather than sending a demand letter, it could have chosen its forum and venue, perhaps bringing the suit in the 9th Circuit -- and thereby getting all the benefit of the 9th Circuit Napster Opinion.
Because Aimster gets to pick the venue, this action is brought in New York, in the Second Circuit, and thus giving the P2P folks a second "byte" at the apple, getting to argue the Napster case pretty much afresh, perhaps obtaining a different result from the Second Circuit.
And the conflict between the Circuits would be a basis for review by the Supreme Court, so that the Court can ultimately determine whether it meant what it said in the Sony Betamax case.
Creating a CD is almost 400% lower than making a cassette yet CD's are more expensive for some unknown reason.
Piracy is and will always be around, and personally I think it adds fuel to RIAA's arguments. Burning an MP3 is not similar to piracy since you obviously have to purchase the CD in the first place. Trading an MP3 is no different than recording something off a cassette and giving it to your friend, and all studies done have shown the majority of MP3 downloaders end up purchasing the music if they like it.
RIAA Sucks started to look hopeful in their presentations of how irrate RIAA really is althouh it isn't updated much. So you may want to check there.
Understandably also one should realize that the RIAA is a business as is any other, and anyone with the right frame of mind would do all they can to protect their finances. Sure they run around bullying people, but many people have become hip to their game, and its only a matter of time before many artists look at the facts behind MP3 swapping. It does not hurt their revenue, in fact it helps it. But when you have the marketing and money to stand behind, you can get away with murder. And thats what the RIAA is doing with their lawsuits.
Its a dirty game but someone always has to play it. RIAA is nothing without the artists, and its some of those same artists who set RIAA off in the first place. Until those same artists see the realities behind people swapping music, who account for a large amount of their salaries, the RIAA will always look morally right on paper to those who don't see the underlying factors.
blackbox themes
Want Root?
Since, RIAA seems to be going after the medium of transmission instead of the messenger does this mean they could sure the US Postal Service because I am sure there are millions of people sending CDs which may or may not contain licensed copyright information.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
Yes, it is, under the Audio Home Recording Act. (At least in the US.) Section 1008 explicitly made personal, noncommercial recording legal:
No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of a digital audio recording device or a digital audio recording medium for making digital musical recordings.
The music industry seems to have *always* been immune to price competition, and now they whine and complain when their distribution model changes. Yet companies across this nation have to change and adjust when other market changes occur. However these music people just whine, complain and get congress to act on their behalf. What's going on here?
Why don't all businesses get *special* protections from the government? Pehaps you only get the special attention when you have lots of money to peddle influence, money from CD overcharges.
Seriously, though, if her dad knew that Aimster's users are (with all respect to Slashdot readers) probably all obsessive losers with poor hygeine, he probably wouldn't have done this. If he did know that and still pimped her out, I think he can be brought up on child abuse charges. Aimster users are even worse than the average geek... after all, they're willing to break the law to get access to AOL services. That's like stealing Richard Simmons videos because you can't get enough sweatin' to the oldies!
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I like to watch.
I think Aimster has a much better chance of falling under fair use than napster does. If it's fair use to share a recording with a few of your friends (and not everyone in the world as is the case with napster) then why should it not be fair use if it's done on-line? Basically, it's been accepted that people will share recordings among their friends... and I don't see the RIAA trying to crack down on that... why should it be different just because it's on-line? Small scale sharing among friends has always happened. It happened long before mp3s or even cds... it's probably not worth the RIAA's time or money to try to stop it (because it will just go on off-line instead of on-line). Unless Aimster becomes the next napster somehow (i.e. maybe by everyone on aimster putting everyone else on their buddy list), then it's probably not a problem for the RIAA (I doubt it will effect their bottom line in any significant way).
Ben
It seems clear from the success of Napster and similar services that people do want to copy files and music. The RIAA doesn't. Why should we listen to the opinions of the RIAA, but not the consumer? Surely we should have rights to copy as well.
Shoot, we should start sharing a bunch of text files containing 1,000,000 millions lines of "The RIAA are a bunch of morons" (with some sort of binary scrambled encryption), add an .mp3 extension and put Metallica somewhere in the title, and start sharing it through the service widespread.
When these guys inevitably reach the courtroom, they bring in their expert computer witness...
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
I mentioned in a K5 post here what I think of the RIAA.
The same ideas still stand.
The RIAA are a bunch of thieving jerks. They long had the excuse that they're the champions of the artists. Now, when online music distribution threatens to render their business model obsolete they show their true colors. They attempt to destroy this amazing new channel of music distribution rather than lose profits. They have declared that their profit is more important than the artists' profit. It's time they learned otherwise.
Keep copying the mp3's. And if you feel the artists deserve remuneration for their work, by all means mail them a check.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
No single entity wins in this case, though one could argue that the RIAA does they had the opportunity to cash in (which is not what they're really after) on Napster and yet chose to squander that chance. The RIAA values control over money, well folks it's too late filesharing is not going to go away no matter what you do. You should have taken the money. Now you'll have a greater problem un-sanctioned un-controlable individuals sharing files. I'd wager to guess that when people involved with the riaa go home they fire up napster to check out $one_hit_wonder instead of buying a $16 album with one good song on it. You can't stop stuff like aimster, gnutella etc, unless you plan on wasting money knocking on doors across the country.
Story w/out annoying Flash ad here.
/.ers (asked w/ no fear now that I know that 95% of you are also male)?
Wired also has the story.
I love the preemptive strike (although I worry about Boies' track record as of late), but what I love the most is how one of the founders pimps out his 16 year old daughter! She is cute though...what do you think
Most of the arguments I've been hearing center on copyright issues -- who owns the rights, fair use, etc. But there may be an angle here that could blow the RIAA and others right out of the water... Isn't it illegal to intercept and/or interfere with private wire/wireless communications unless you have a court order to do so? It seems to me that whether you're using Napster or Aimster or Gnutella -- whatever -- you are communicating over telephone lines (in whole or part) and should therefore be protected by federal wiretap laws. Snooping on a private communication or otherwise interfering with that communication should only be permitted by law enforcement and only when there is a court order to permit it. And to get a court order, don't you need to be able to prove that there is a reasonable suspicion of wrong-doing? Maybe someone should try to bring charges against the RIAA for illegal wiretapping.