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RIAA Trains Legal Sights On Aimster
AdventureExtreme writes: "The recording industry filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Aimster on Thursday.
The suit was filed in federal court in Manhattan on behalf of major record labels including Universal Music, Sony Music , EMI Group and Bertelsmann's BMG. " An RIAA lawyer is quoted as saying that they plan to seek a Napster-like injunction to bar Aimster users from trading in copyrighted materials. (FAT32 file systems are widely used for copyright violation too; are they next?)
Okay then. Fire up Napster or Aimster, and search for a High Quality JPEG reproduction of the Mona Lisa. How about a file which describes the inner workings of a Floppy drive? Or perhaps the entire text of 'Macbeth'?
Disappointed? Now search for an mp3 audio file of 'It's gonna be me' by N*Sync.
See a pattern?
Just because M$, the MPAA, and the RIAA are losing money because *some* people use the internet and file sharing services to distribute copyrighted materials doesn't mean they can restrict MY rights in any way.
WELL. I mean shit, why should we put our bags on the belt and walk through metal detectors at the airport because *some* people use bombs to blow up airplanes? They're stomping all over my right to privacy! Just because the FAA, the airlines, and the airports are losing money doesn't mean they can restrict MY rights in any way.
There may be a problem with the distribution of copyrighted material on the internet -- but that doesn't give organizations like [Microsoft], the [RIAA], the [MPAA], or the [BSA] the right to violate MY rights. (l33t-speak edits are mine)
There may be a problem? Where have you been sitting for the past two years? Regardless of what you may think or what blind eye you choose to turn to the situation, the RIAA isn't going to pounce on something with no justification. Sure they love to overcharge for albums. Sure they rape the artist on profits by keeping the majority of it for their own greedy bank accounts. But I dislike the RIAA for the same reason I dislike Napster and its friends - they all screw the artists. Go ahead and say "Oh, well, they make enough money as it is!" Should they be condemned for cashing in on their talents? Every one of you would do the exact same thing given the chance. I see nobody stopping you from climbing into a studio and putting out an album.
They can't say "we're going to force services like Napster to filter out anything that has the digital music contents of X" -- that violates my right to distribute parodies
Why not? You write a book and decide to sell it for $12.95. I steal the manuscript from your desk, make a shitload of photocopies, and give them away. Are you as an author not going to attempt to regulate that?
And last I checked, parodies differ greatly from the content they parody. Name a parody that is an exact duplicate of the original, and I will withdraw this argument.
they now have to make their product inferior via unnecessary bloat.
Companies have the right to make their software as inferior and as bloated as they damn well please. Consumer reaction will determine whether they continue that process.
They can't say "we're going to keep tabs on every log of the internet," and log IP's, and request that ISP's give us the personal information of IP's that distribute "copyrighted files" -- that's a violation of the right to privacy.
I don't recall anyone ever stating that they were going to attempt to "keep tabs on every log of the internet." And guess what, bucko? Once you're assigned an IP on the internet, your privacy is all but gone. DoS a major government website from your IP, and you'll see how private your connection really is.
In other words, they are free to protect their rights, so long as they do not in any way violate my rights, or anyone elses.
Oh, I see. So they're perfectly within their freedom to protect themselves, just so long as it doesn't inconvenience you, right? Because all of the 'rights' you are arguing about aren't rights. You're merely pandering to popular opinion hoping to score a bit of brownie points. That stack of pirated CDs in your closet is inconsequential, because if they get seized, they're invading your right to privacy.
Aww. It pains me so.
You want to fight something? Fight the RIAA. Fight Napster. Fight the Napster clones. Fight for the rights of the artists. Get out there and spread the word of what's happening, and how the RIAA and all of the file sharing services are ripping off the artists. Do something. Do anything!
Why aren't you doing anything? Oh. That's right. You're only interested in free music. That being the case, you probably just "Pshhh'd" and "Bah'd" your way through my post, because your mind is still too busy trying to justify your actions.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Actually, if they could manage to ban FAT32, that'd be the first good thing to come out of these lawsuits.
Maybe we can convince them to ban NetBIOS while they're at it.
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Based on a quick perusal of the aimster website, it appears that it's just a filesharing system tacked onto a chat program. My question is, if they can ban aimster, what will stop them from attacking good old IRC?
Think about it. Files can easily be transferred via dcc, and it'd be trivial to set up a bot to distribute the contents of selected directories to selected nicks, just like aimster.
Where will it end? They (the RIAA lawyers) can't possibly win until the whole of the net has been shut down. And then how will they reap the profits from their online sales?
Feh.
Zarchon
You know, there's a real simple way to deal with this kind of thing. On the day that Aimster gets shut down, everybody who's ever used Napster, Gnutella, Aimster, etc. should STOP BUYING CD'S FOR A MONTH! Just start making a list of the CD's you WOULD have bought, and get them a month later.
Hell, you've got how many CD's? And how many gigs of mp3's? You can put off new CD's for a month, can't you?
Don't think it won't be noticed. These suckers keep REAL careful track. A sudden drop is gonna be noticed BIGTIME.
It's all about the money. Vote with yours.
Of course that's mainly based on volume of mp3s traded. Stil it's interesting that everyone has always been talking about how gnutella can avoid punishment because it has no central servers, and it seems that's working! I guess going after individual Gnutella software companies would take more time/megabyte of "pirated" music than aimster(which I assume only has one real producer and therefore more volume per producer).
Current copyright laws are, in my opinion, going to put the 20th century's greatest artistic outpourings into a legally mandated black hole. Most artists and authors have an expectation that their work will immortalize them. Otherwise we wouldn't have such things as the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame (as biased and political an organization as it is) or the Grammys, or the Oscars, or any other prizes and awards for great contributions to the field.
The problem with this expectation is that in order for your work to be immortalized, it has to survive beyond the first generation of its fans. Just because the Baby Boomers put down in their book that Bob Dylan was somebody fuckin' great, doesn't mean that I will. And it is my generation that will be responsible for ensuring the longevity of art created by my parents' generation. In order for a work to survive past a generation, copies have to be made. Lots of them. Vinyl albums are incredibly fragile, and are easily scratched by careless children, and left on radiators or in attics and warp. CD's get dropped behind the sofa. Cassette tapes are left on the dashboard and melt. Boo.
Since copying all of these media is now illegal, I won't be making any copies of them. The only entity authorised to copy the media is the record company. They only make copies when they think they'll get a sale. Now, as the generation who popularized the work starts dropping off, sales of the work drop off as well. Fewer copies are made. But the copyright term still stands. Before the copyright expires, virtually every "consumer" of his work will have expired as well. Their collections will be sold at estate sales, thrown in the trash, or left in the attic to decay.
Finally, the copyright expires and people are now free to distribute their own copies of the work. But who cares anymore? The first generation that will be legally able to make free and clear copies of Bob Dylan's work, as I understand it, will be my own grandchildren, who will not be born for another twenty years.
The possibility exists that there will be few private copies after 75 years. The company that owns them may clear them out to make more room in their vault.
Put that in the wayforward machine and imagine any type of bleak orwellian culture you like. The results are in the long-term detrimental to that which most artists crave: their continued adulation by a rapt audience. It is the cheer of the crowd that keeps them going. Knowing that the cheer goes on after their funeral has to be a significant part of what they expect as their legacy. Over-restrictive copyright laws will cut that legacy short, and their life's work will be merely "product," to be disposed of immediately upon consumption.
This is also the justification for EULA's and reverse engineering laws. After all, if you're not copying anything what does it have to do with copyright? Here is the relevant paragraph:
... which indicate that the copy created in the RAM is not fixed. ... The law also supports the conclusion that [the defendant's] loading of copyrighted software into RAM creates a `copy' of that software in violation of the Copyright Act."
In MAI Systems Corp v Peak Computer Inc 991 F2d 511 (9th Cir 1993) the United States Federal Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit held that "copying" for the purposes of US copyright law occurs when a computer program is transferred from a permanent storage device to a computer's RAM. At 518 of its reasons the Court said: "After reviewing the record we find no specific facts
How we know is more important than what we know.
Didn't an earlier article on Aimster point out that it used a form of encryption as an access control, and that the RIAA would be in violation of the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA if they snooped?
What happened to that?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
...that the RIAA was only going after SERVICE providers that helped people trade mp3s. AIMster, to my knowledge, is only software that doesn't rely upon a central server (being based on gnutella and all). So how exactly are they going to get an injunction? The whole point with Napster was that Napster provided a SERVICE, NOT software, to help people trade mp3s. Therefore, it wasn't quite like suing someone for using FAT32 for piracy. I think the approprate analogy would be free disk-space type providers that used FAT32 to allow people to store and distribute mp3s =).
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
It's a pity about MP3.com but I really don't like mp3 as a format anyway due to the patent encumberance things. I'd really like to see a company start up with MP3.com's original business plan, using the .ogg file format and pushing mainly indie groups. Anyone could have seen that my.mp3.com shit getting ready to hit the fan as soon as they suggested it.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
No. They'll just revive the old punishment of chopping it off. After all, they say you are a thief.
This is getting stupid. Next thing you know, you'll be hearing about a lawsuit against Cisco, for routing the packets which are infringing copyright.
You poke fun at the idea that fat32 is used to facilitate piracy of IP, but what about AIM itself? after all, isn't Aimster a plugin-like program to use the AOL Instant Messenger software to trade music? Not to mention that you can just trade files directly with AIM...
AOL/Time Warner are in the uncomfortable position of needing to sue themselves into oblivion.
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"don't smoke, don't drink, don't fuck
at least i can fucking think"
Minor Threat
He added that the legal action in New York will seek a Napster-like injunction to bar Aimster users from trading in copyrighted materials.
Does this remedy make sense? Without a central sever, how could AIMster bar trading of copyrighted materials?
Incidentally, why is AIMster incorporated? Is it to provide the individuals with a legal umbrella? (It is hard to believe that they have get-rich plans. They seem pretty clued.)
And, hey, wasn't AIMster already suing for a declaratory judgement on its service?
With Napster, it was easy to say, "look, we did a bunch of searches, and we got 99% copyrighted material.". What are they going to do with Aimster, I wonder? The link didn't give any details, but I know that the RIAA isn't on my buddy list. Think they'll try to subpoena a lot of the information?
Consider this: If a person has an excellent memory and a diverse musical talent, s/he can to some extent reproduce a piece of music to someone else without violating any copyright laws (not considering public performance, of course). Well, most of us are not that talented, so why cannot we use technology to augment our limited physical and mental capacity? I know it's not exactly like Braille terminals for the blind, but where do you draw the line?
As to the outlawing of TCP/IP, there will be other ways. New protocols, new physical systems for communication. The geeks will find their way somehow.. By the time this happens, let us hope that the law regains its original idea as something organized by the people, for the people. Until then, let's really screw RIAA and practice our Jedi skills in the telepathic trading of mp3z.
--
I hit the karma cap, now do I gain enlightenment?
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
The Backstreet Boys. QED.
They *are* breaking the law
They are *NOT* breaking the law.
This is a simple case of a misguided, ignorant, and corrupt system. There is no law that says 'you may not potentially provide a means that someone may use to violate copyright law.'
If there *was* such a law cars (used to transport illegal copies of works), houses (used to store illegal copies of works), and pencils (used to make illegal copies of works) would be targeted.
This matches the simple 'hammer as a B&E tool' model. Aimster may be used to aid in an illegal activity by a third party. It may also be used for legal activity. Banning something because it *may* be used illegally is dangerous - it violates presumption of innocence... and it is a *VERY* slippery slope America is descending. You are making things illegal based on their function with regards to enterprise - not based on humanistic moral concepts. Laws should not restrict individuals for the sake of profit. Ever.
200 years from now America is going to be a perverse place; one described in countless cyberpunk novels where cyberspace is a world where good guys use illegal tech and run from the authorities.
It was rejected last fall. IOMEGA and IBM were the only huge players in favor for it anyway. HP, Apple and other computer makers who make systems for multimedia rejected it because it would piss off there customers. Just do not buy a Ioemga or an IBM drive and you will be fine. SO relax. Also Dvd's and the new SCSI standard already have cprm or a cprm-like mechanism for the dvd drives. This is why you can't copy .vob files with the drives. The new SCSI and dvd drives obviously work fine under linux. Linus doesn't have to write a cprm driver to get the devices to work. The area of the disk in question needs special software to write to it and its not manditory to use the sectors for proper use. Linux can just just ignore the sectors. Unless your a pirate or use sdmi files there is nothing to worry about. You can still download mp3's to the drive under linux with cprm, assuming it was passed by tha ATA commitee.
http://saveie6.com/
oh darn! I used my hand to copy a protected work. does this mean an injunction will be filed against me using my hand?
Your grandchildren, if they are ever born, will never see the Dylan albums because the Sonny Bono III Copyright Extension act will keep them locked up with Mickey and Goofy in a perpetual string of "limited time"'s, as the constitution allows.
Bryguy
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
They skipped gnutella because, as far as peer to peer systems go, it sucks. Research papers such as Free Riding on Gnutella and Why Gnutella Can't Scale, No, Really articulate this much better than I can. The success rate of pirating music via Gnutella is much less than those of napster, aimster, and community-based hotline servers.
:)
The RIAA admitted this, if you remember
Timorhy refers to CPRM, the Content Protection for Recordable Media standards initiative. This would in effect prevent the transfer of certain content on particular media. The proposal it to implement the 'protection' in hardware with a software interupt, which means probably software could simply bypass the system. It's not entirely clear, as the spec isn't fully defined. This is a vary scary deal which hasn't gotten much press in the United States. Read up. This is important stuff.
--CTH
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--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
In a world where the organizations with the most money get to tell the other organizaitons what to do, the fact that the RIAA and MPAA are actively attacking anything that allows people to share their music/movies doesn't surprise me. The quality of most MP3s / DivX movies is nowhere near that you'd find on a CD or DVD, and the mediums aren't that big of a threat to the companies producing the media.
As a result of Napster, record companies actually INCREASED their profits, because people were less reserved about buying a CD if they knew that they would like some of the songs on it before hand. I would -never- but CDs, because I didn't know if I'd like them, but by being able to try it out before I buy it, I purchased an entire CD of music that I downloaded off of Napster.
I have DivX movies on CD - but also a DVD-ROM drive and DVD movies, legally purchased, because I want the higher quality for some things. A $3 burned DivX of a movie is like an MP3 of a song - it's a good trial, and if I like it, I go out and buy the real thing.
The major entertainment associations feel threatened by the new technologies that make it more difficult for them to keep tabs on distrubution. This doesn't mean that the file-sharing is wrong; it means that the RIAA's rules need to be adapted to the Internet age. The best thing they could do that would increase their sales would be to stop policing swapping of MP3s. Then, people like me would go out and buy CDs again, instead of going through the hassal of using Gnutella to find MP3s and burn them onto CDs.
My $.02 and a few killobytes.
No whazzup comments or humming tunes used to sell cars and the like.
I have to wonder if we are infringing copyright everytime we whistle *The Simpsons* on the john?
I thought the whole point of advertising was to build brand-awareness, and is that not what the majority of music is these days? Building brand loyalty and awareness? I hate TV, therefore (for me) Napster and friends have become the media advertising machines that replaced TV. I think the media conglomerates are alienating an entire generation of potential revenue.
We are misplacing our hate and anger. The RIAA is made up of corporations, the sole point of a corp is to make money for its shareholders. If they think that they're losing money because of something and figure out a way that they could stop it from happening they're going to try it. If their method of halting this loss of money violates the rights that individuals (should) have that won't mean a thing to them. The only responsibility that they really have is to shareholders; they are not beholden to us in any way except sales, and I don't see a boycott of all music published by corps in the RIAA on the horizon. We do have a recourse though (did you really think this was going to be a pro RIAA post?), politicians. (a horrible recourse but one nonetheless) They *are* dependent on us for jobs, and don't tell me that the companies have enough money to keep the politicians on their side. Votes get a candidate elected, not money. If enough people became educated about the cancer that is the DMCA it would be thrown out of the books. As people who know about the DMCA and other such injustices it is your duty as well as to your benefit to let people know what's going on. When was the last time you dismissed a question from a non /. type person about this stuff because you decided they were too stupid to be bothered with? Or even got out from in front of your computer to tell people about this stuff? I did it today, but I can't be the only one. Stop flaming corporations for trying to squeeze every last drop of money out of the consumer; it's what they do. Instead start sending mail to your congressmen and telling regular people about what's going on. If you won't do that than you don't have a leg to stand on in this issue. Politicians (sadly) are the key to getting our rights back. Oh by the way, I'm downloading copyrighted music off of Aimster as I type this :)
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
Pretty soon the RIAA will realize that the entire internet is nothing but a huge conspicacy to steal thier money. I'm pretty sure a few of the bytes that I sent in my last few Quake packets are exactly identical to those found in copywrited MP3's.
Seriously though, I think there is a GREAT case to be made by AMATUER ROCK STAR LAW STUDENTS (if there are any out there) who are looking for a project to do. Sue the RIAA for anti-competitive practices (after all, they are taking away YOUR right to disturibute YOUR music. Imagine how shrill the cries would be if you told them they couldn't sell CDs at blockbuster anymore...)
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
It all goes back to the golden rule. He who has the gold makes the rules.
... but Peak, as an unauthorized repair center (read competition), did not.
In this case, it's the RIAA and MPAA. Napster is most likely to wither and die in their fight not because the RIAA may or may not have a better legal case, but because the money will run out. 2600's fight against the MPAA may fall victim to the same problem, even with the support of the EFF.
This is not new.
Several years ago, a case out of (I believe California) called MAI vs. Peak Electronics wound up being granted review by the Supreme Court of the United States.
MAI's claim against Peak was that Peak violated MAI's copyright because the act of turning MAI's computer on made a copy of data contained into ROM, and that making this copy without a license was a violation of MAI's copyright. Never mind that the copy was required for the operation of the computer -- the whole point was to squash an independent service provider and force repairs to go only to MAI-approved repair outfits. Customers had a license to make a copy, and authorized repair centers had that same right
Peak had to settle (they lost, essentially) because the money ran out. They couldn't file the necessary briefs with the Supreme Court because they didn't have the cash to pay the lawyers.
It's the Golden Rule. It doesn't matter that the law is a bad law, or that the copyright owners are money-grubbing b*st*rds whose only interest is in lining their own pockets. It's that they have the money, and we do not.
Remove the caps and hold to a mirror.
Aimster is a seperate program that piggybacks on the Aim network, but does not incorporate the AIM software.
I'm the stranger...posting to
From a legal point of view, the RIAA has a point. No, this is not flamebait, but the Napster case did set a legal precedent for saying that any service that can be used to transfer copyrighted materials can be challenged and.or shut down. After all, Aimster is capable of fulfilling the same functions as Napster, to an extent, which makes the precedent very "on point".
The only hope for Aimster, as I see it, is to argue that there is a difference in emphasis between the two services. Napster was intended for sharing hard-to-find media files on the internet, and distributing them easily. The naturally leads to ease in distributing copywritten materials.
What Aimster could argue is that the emphasis of Aimster is not on large-scale copywritten file sharing as with Napster, but on providing users a way to share files between each other on a smaller scale, as with email or ICQ. Aimster can be used to distribute copywritten works, but it lacks the file-searching ability of Napster, among other things, that made it an ideal medium for distributing copywritten works. It's also less easy for a person to give everyone on the service a given file - each potential recipient has to be approved by the person distributing the file.
In other words, Aimster is more akin to an instant messaging client that a large-scale file-sharing network, and that is the only hope it has for survival. Unless, of course, the judge in this case is smarter than the one for napster.
I'm the stranger...posting to