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."

Comments

News Flash!

[Adrian Lopez]

Extra: The RIAA files suit against ISPs running mail servers for failure to filter out incoming copyrighted content.

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.

This is hilarious!

[VValdo]

Aimster is actually trying to get the DCMA to apply to RIAA by encrypting their peer2peer conversations and insisting that any attempt to monitor the conversation would be circumventing a technology designed to protect copyright (the Aimster user's copyrighted communications I gather)!

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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for the nth time, copyright violation != stealing

[FreeUser]

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.

Here's what's happening . . .

[werdna]

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.

Bunch of whiners

[Muttonhead]

One way to guarantee a black market in anything is setting the price too high. If CD's were $5 each, who would take the time to trade them online? Isn't there a price point at which pirating would end; would be unfeasable?

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.

or

[The_Messenger]

you could write a DeCSS implementation using Perl's English module, record yourself reading the code out loud with Metallica playing in the background, encode it as an MP3, and piss of both the RIAA and the MPAA at the same time. :-)

--

Fair Use

[BenCaxton]

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).

Re:Factualities

[shanek]

Creating a CD is almost 400% lower than making a cassette yet CD's are more expensive for some unknown reason.

The reason is far from unknown. CDs are in greater demand than cassette tapes, and therefore they can get away with charging a higher price for them. If people weren't willing to buy them at that price, the record companies would be forced to lower their prices.

In fact, one might argue that this high demand for music file sharing services is an example of precisely that. Any other business would drop prices in response; the RIAA goes whining to the government who, because of their political connections, is glad to oblige at the expense of consumers' freedom.

All of this, of course, clouds the real issue. Since several studies and polls have shown that free music file sharing results in increased sales, it's clear to me that what they're really wanting is to stop independent artists from having an easy way to distribute their music and gain recognition. Why else do you think the RIAA wants Napster to only allow songs on an "approved" list?

Possible way to counteract this?

[wrinkledshirt]

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...

Keep our eye on the ball

[Kasreyn]

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