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P2P vs. RIAA: RIAA Wins
revscat writes: "Salon has a nice writeup of the persecution and eventual success of the RIAA vs. commercial MP3 entities. And while alternatives exist, they "may eventually succumb to the might of the RIAA, which is already making noises about targeting software developers, ISPs and individual users of the network with lawsuits." Basic gist: for profit MP3 has consolidated into the hands of the recording industry." Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
I'd quote or parody a certain Beatles song about a walrus, but that would violate some sort of "intellectual property" restriction!
The free market is what redetermines whether or not a corporation serves the "public good", not government officials who want everything to serve government. The RIAA's censorship would not go anywhere at all without government intervening on its behalf. As in many areas, government is the problem here, and without government intervention, the RIAA would not be able to act against the "public good" as it has been doing.
He who has the gold makes the rules, he who makes the rules gets the gold.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
2: Yes please. John Perry Barlow of the EFF would like you to do this, as well. Consider yourself the shock troops for a new era of communications liquidity. It is WRONG for the Internet to act like brick-and-mortar distribution.
3: Especially if _you_ wrote the music...
4: Speaking of which- WRITE MUSIC! The difference between RIAA A-list and garage has _never_ been so tiny. The labels have actually been turning away from their wonderful resources as in huge studios with millions of dollars worth of gear, and turning to "Pro Tools". Because it's cheaper, and they don't think anyone can tell the difference. This puts just about everybody on the same footing. Go out and do the kind of music _you_ would want to hear.
5: Better than that, use it against itself. Make music and have the 'small print' say "All commercial rights reserved- noncommercial copying OKAY". Hang on to your rights to stop Sony or Universal from ripping you off, but extend rights to your peers and specifically allow free copying. There needs to be a lot of ARTISTS out there doing this. Besides, it's a damned good selling point- proves you're NOT RIAA.
Get out there and do stuff! The next 'Santana' isn't gonna come from the RIAA labels. DIY and believe in yourself (and do your homework about how to run and finance a small business, because if you're serious that is what you are).
RIAA got their power when they controlled the channels between musicians and the public (you either signed a recording contract or you were totally out of luck, because of the costs of studios, recording, record production, etc).
They still control the key things: radio airtime and distribution channels. Payola still exists to effectively control what gets played on the radio, there's just middlemen that do it. Shelf space is also bought and sold, and the stores aren't going to let you buy placement once and damage their relationship with the big-name distributors. So musicians who want a chance at anything have to choose this monopolized system, get a very lucky break, or make a living doing live performances at clubs and the like.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Secret windows code
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
There's obviously something wrong with the software industry. How can so many programmers get so rich? Hopefully the end result of the C/Java/PERL movement will be that VB programmers start earning a realistic salary.
Life is complete only for brief intervals in between toys or projects -- John Dalton
> So musicians who want a chance at anything have to choose this monopolized system, get a very lucky break, or make a living doing live performances at clubs and the like.
Well, since from what I've read in numerous articles, most musicians DON'T make any money AT ALL, they probably are better off just doing live performances & selling their own stuff via the web. So they don't get on radio - they also don't fork over all their profits to the RIAA folks.
1. Corporations aren't mentioned at ALL in the constitution. They are a complete legal fiction, that could be legally destroyed whenever congress chooses to.
...To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
2. Have you read Article I, Section 8, Clause 8?
"Congress shall have Power
Note: The purpose is NOT to make artists lots of money, but to promote progress - a public good. The means is to grant them exclusive rights, allowing them to make money, but ultimately, this is only true as long as it promotes progress of "Science and the Useful Arts."
3. Try studying the history of the recording industry - the RIAA got their power when they controlled the channels between musicians and the public (you either signed a recording contract or you were totally out of luck, because of the costs of studios, recording, record production, etc). Most of those factors have changed, but the RIAA still is using that power to try and hold on.
Not entirely true. They do a lot of marketing. Without that, Britney Spears would not have had a chance. The songs themselves are not that good. And she wouldn't have had the money for all those expensive outfits in expensive videoclips.
Not sure whether that would be a bad thing, but face it: Internet is not magic pixie dust. You still need marketing which is what the music industry does.
just listen to the monotonous nattering of the Frogs. It is so soothing to just sit here on the porch and relax after a long hard day and just listen to the frogs attempt to mate, as they puff themselves up with self importance so that their plaintive call can travel farther in the night, on the off chance that the very rare hairy lady frog will hear and come hopping over :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
This is a lie. The RIAA labels release all kinds of music, for example I listen to jazz music you wouldn't have heard of, and almost all of it is on RIAA labels. It's not that they don't market all kinds of music, it's more that the average listener isn't interested in good music.
You would think that if enough artists got fed up with taking it in the rear from record labels, they would start their own business. And no, I don't mean Master P getting his own record label. He's still just ho'in for the man.
What I'm talking about is more of a collective. The creation of genre-specific, artist-friendly, groups who cut the labels out of the process. I understand labels have the distribution power, but look at the model mp3.com uses with it's D.A.M. format. The artist gets to release material when they think it's ready and they don't have to answer to some corporate shill A&R person who only cares about getting a commercial hit. And the artists can get a fairer share of the proceeds.
I'm lazy. Most people are. I also happen to be remarkably wealthy with regard to my lack of monetary funds. However, email is free and, as it would happen, relatively disconnected from anything likely to threaten my aformentioned laziness. My proposal? Give me an email address, and possibily even a body of inflamatory and or intellectually clever text, with which I will send, nay, toss, at the offending party. There are uncountable numbers of me--note our switch to plural--who can convince the said party that we are indeed annoying enough to deal with properly. --shrug--
His usage is correct. It is a quote attributable to Alphonse Karr from the book Les Guêpes, IIRC.
"It's here, but no one wants it." - The Sugar Speaker
While I agree with you in spirit, I don't think it will work that way in practice. Do cops pull over every speeder that goes by them? No, they get the guy doing 90 in a 65. If The RIAA prosecutes the 3% (or whatever) of users who share 1000+ songs, then the rest will be afraid to share anything. It will turn into a bunch of leaches who only share what happens to be in their downloads folder.
Freenet gaurantees anonymous publication under most circumstances and anonymous retrieval under practically all circumstances. Distributers (i.e. node opperators) are only as safe as the law allows them to be and their ability to afford lawyers to defend themselves holds out. Personally if the RIAA sent a letter to me saying I had to shut down my node or face prosecution, I wouldn't have the resources to defend myself if they chose to prosecute.
Read Ian's paper on the subject if you don't believe me.
The notion that without monetary incentive, musicians (or any artist) wouldn't produce is ridiculous, and it blows me away that people are so willing to parrot this idea. Music is an inherent part of human culture, has always been produced, and always will be. Artists' rights are an important part of the debate here, but let's not spout obviously absurd ideas.
Simple. Just sue the owners of the news servers that carry it.
If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?
is it? do you have any links online which discuss this?
They're not breaking the law. The copyright law says that an artist -- not a corporation who bought "rights" -- can receive limited protection for a limited amount of time. That limited time was short, like 7 years, not life of the author + 70 years.
All use is fair use.
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I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
I have to agree: the diaRIAA can try to sue ISPs (who are protected from responsibility for their users' actions by the DMCA, btw), and users, but there are 5 billion of us, and they can't sue us all.
As Princess Leia once said, the more you tighten your grip, the more systems will slip through your fingers.
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I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
Listen is repete???
Ecoutez et repetez
realkiwi
I guess it is because by very stupid sounding mesures and laws France has been able to stem the tide of American cultural imperialism.
realkiwi
lol
I am the crowbar
realkiwi
Actually it's Et vous êtes un con monsieur
the feminin for con being of course conne
realkiwi
Connasse
Pleased to be of assistance
realkiwi
It is fine with me. It is French and not Quebecois.
realkiwi
Like back in the 50s when black artists had huge disk sales in the US and no air time. Of course WASP americans aren't fachist or nationalist either are they?
realkiwi
What the hell is that language doing in michael's write-up? Has he "forgotten that he lives in the U.S."?
Michael, speak American. It's the way you would have wanted it.
For more information, click here.
May I ask a question? What is the point of saying something in a foreign language, when the english translation means exactly the same thing?
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
I do not think that the ability to accept conenctions will be the new chokepoint. Yes, there are lots of pople who can not accept connections, but there arre also a great many people who can accept connections, so the connections can always be reversed in practice. Now, people who can not accept connections may not be able to download files from people who can not accept conections, but I do not feal that there is anything wrong with that.. those people accepted an inferior type of service to save money. I expect that cable will not allow servers since the upstream and downstream have vastly diffrent bandwidths (or at least had vastly diffrent bandwidths historically).
BTW> It "should" be impossible for the RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, AOL, or anyone to really change the dynamic of the internet so that all individuals recieve service where they can not accept connections. This would represent a fundamental change to the nature of the internet in a VERY bad way and would essentually "instantly" turn it into one big TV network. I do not think anyone would stand for that after they have seen it working the right way.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
"Chokepoints" are irrelevent since a reasonable effort to disguise information coupled with good cryptography would make an unfilterable P2P protocoll.
Example: Run Gnutella over SSH or SHTTP connections. No, ISP would dare to block SSH and SHTTP connection and they have no control over the content once the conection start up.
Now, the RIAA can try to track the network to keep people who host file blacklisted, but there are LOTs of people trading music and it would be pretty easy to design a system which accepted some casualties, but prevented the RIAA from tracking down everyone. Unfortunatly, a system like this would not allow anyone to see the whole network, so your searches might find a higher precentage of common garbage like Britney Spears, but it could still be made to work.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
The corporation must serve the workers only to the extent that they will stay with the corporation. Any more serving of the workers, and profits go down. Likewise, customers must be given the minimum service to keep them. Because the RIAA is basically a monopoly (yes, yes, it's a consortium of corporations, probably not technically a monopoly), it doesn't need to serve customers much as long as it can knock out things such as napster and gnutella before they do any damage. If we remove too many regulations from corporations, behavior such as this can begin to run rampant. Manufacturing industries won't need to check for environmental impact, for example. In addition, without an equalizing force such as government, it can be incredibly hard for those with less stuff to rise in the hierarchy. The purpose of wellfare programs is to help level the playing field.
with the information that I have (top secret), i just have to say that the RIAA is in for a big surprise. there are things in the pipeline that I know about that the RIAA cannot stop, and most likely, there are things out there that I don't know about, that will begin to become visible over the next year or so. :-)
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
son: Dad, why are you called running bison?
dad: cos when grandma and granddad created me, they saw a bison running..
son: dad, why's my brother called flying eagle?
dad: well son.. when your brother was conceived, mom and me saw an eagle fly by..
son: dad, why..
dad: stop asking stupid questions, tearing rubber
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
French is the only language that utilizes a continuous stream of sound. All other languages utilize pauses between words.
Say What? Perhaps you mean indo-european languages. Dakotan languages (and other polysynthetic languages) have no pauses between words (it can be argued that they don't have words in the sense that we think of words) because every grammatically correct utterance is a complete sentence. Which is why they all have names like "(she)Dances-with-Bikers" and such forth
-- Rich
Free your mind and your Ass will follow -- George Clinton
In truth, corporations exist to serve everyone involved with them: workers, shareholders, and customers. If a corporation fails to serve any of these groups, the people will leave (not participate) and the corporation will fail.
This "service" exists only to the point that it facilitates the acquisition of profit.
The RIAA would not be able to make war against one of these groups (customers) like it has if there was no government intervention
This government intervention (the courts) is simply a tool of the corporate game. They want a legal stick to beat each other up with and they don't particularly care what the rules are, so long as there are rules by which they can compete with one another. All corporations are equal in this regard, and the rules make it so that those who have the most capital (i.e. are most successful) have the most access to the rule-making process. They like this and they know how it works.
-- Rich
Free your mind and your Ass will follow -- George Clinton
... Not the solution. Of course companies based on digital music distribution have gotten crushed; they were playing with the big boys. They had no chance, and really, we probably didn't want them to succeed. What we do want is a method of file sharing which is immune to corporate control, whether the corporation is Napster OR Sony. Corporations have one and only one purpose; to make profits for their shareholders. The Only purpose of MP3.com, Napster, et al. was to make profits for their shareholders, not to lead some "revolution". The real revolution is when corporations cease to be involved at all in distribution; after all, control of distribution has been the preferred method of making profits since the Knights Templar. When distribution becomes uncontrollable by corporate interests is when things become different than they ever have been. In other words, it can't be ANYTHING like Napster, it HAS to be something like Gnutella. And I think it will succeed. Not by the corporatist standard of profit for the shareholders, but by the control of a distribution channel.
-- Rich
Free your mind and your Ass will follow -- George Clinton
I'm hoping that at some point the halls of congress will ask "why is a corporation's rights more important than an individual? Wasn't our country set up around the sanctity of the individual?"
I imagine that it will be drowned out by the chorus of "your company will pay me HOW much???"
Never understimate the power of human stupidity -Lazarus Long
Thank you for that comment, AAiP.
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Unlike the metaphor of drugs, it is not currently illegal to have copies of songs, it is merely illegal to distribute those copies. A system like freenet practially guarantees anonymity of distribution so that is hardly a concern.
Music will continue to be easy to get, because the programs that allow you to download it easily will continue to exist.
Incidentally the use of the term FUD has very little correlation to the user's intelligence. It's just a term like any other.
My use of it was directed at the writers of the article who, intentionally or otherwise, were making things sound bleaker than they actually are. As such, the term is appropriately applied.
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
Ecoutez est repetez:
Marie France est dans le jardin avec Bruno.
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Moderator's essentials
Oh this is not a new war by any means.
The idea of sharing in order to build a bigger pie for everyone goes all the way back to the time when we were unicellular organisms.
We're 15 billion years old at last count and can therefore afford to be patient.
Remember - in reality - all tyrants still require your full co-operation for their own survival.
For no man can exist alone - what would he eat ?
So make freedom the price you demand in return for your co-operation.
Eventually, everyone will get the message.
- a
Yeah, a horrible thing that you can make 17 bucks a CD. Opposed to whatever piddly fraction of a buck you could be getting now.
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
Everything I read these days is about power and control, it looks like a person cannot do anything anymore without tresspassing some law, I mean, if there were a police officer following me all the time, I'd be bankrupt and imprisoned as hell! Laws are meant to take away your freedom, it is freenet's intention to give you more freedom, one way or another - this will not be allowed, if they can't sue you, they'll shoot you.
--
Bizar technology?
Anyone know where an ex-buggywhip maker can get a job these days?* ******
******************************************
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
I buy CD's at the show, from artists I like.
A number of touring bands do quite nicely without signing onto the Music Industry's agenda (and signing away their "intellectual property"). Ani DeFranco comes to mind, offhand.
Ed Craig "Who cares what you think?" George W. Bush, 4th of July 2001
There is never stealing involved with Napster, as new copies are made (and old copies are not swiped).
It's stealing money. No, you're not stealing the actual music, but if you have possession of the music without having bought it, then you owe the recording industry the money that they charge for it. If you don't pay your debt, that is stealing. Welcome to the wonderful world of intellectual property. Intellectual property can -belong- to someone, as silly as you or I might find that.
If I decided not to pay my power bill, that's stealing as well. I could argue that the power plants would generate the same amount of power whether I used the power or not, that the company is in roughly the same shape before and after I plug in my water heater. But those arguements don't fly.
Cost of production is just as important as cost of distribution. Just because you've lowered the cost of distribution to near-zero doesn't mean you can ignore the cost of production.
So the mixers, people who work at the recording studios, agents, etc deserve to get screwed too?
Make no mistake, the artists do get screwed, and that sucks for them. But screwing other people who worked hard making the music (and they are important too) is hardly fair either.
What do you mean, very little success? They've had excellent success! So what if a few geeks know how to get it and use it? The average user doesn't, and that's all the MPAA really cares about.
No, they won't. There's far to much at stake in the secure encryption world, the government would not want to shut down all e-commerce. What would be far more likely is a Clipper-like situation. Any legal encryption will have methods allowing law enforcement/etc to listen in.
Now, IANAL, or even someone who plays one on tv, but it seems to me that this rampage will come to and end once they start getting involved with people like AOL, who did sponser Gnutella, and who can afford big lawyers.
Sure, they can sue the hell out of Napster, but targeting software developers who create file sharing apps won't last long. Why? The gun lobby.
Think about it. If you can sue someone saying "Well your software could concievably take 7.00$ out of Britanny Spearses pocket" then how much easier is it to say "You create a device that exists soley for the purpose of making holes in people."
Damage lawsuits against gun manufacturers is exactly what the American judicial system is trying to discourage right now, for better or worse. It won't take long for some bright Harvard law grad to make 2+2 come out to "If we can't sue gun makers than, use of a tool to commit a crime does not implicate the tool"
Disclaimer: MINAA (Mummy! I'm Not An Animal!)
Well, an encrypted information flow would make the system invulnerable to government control... not. Aimster, remember?
And there are two ways that the "guvmint" can shut down encrypted P2P:
1. Simply permit the corporations who own the pipes, which will also increasingly own copyrighted content as well, to block all high-speed, or even high-volume, data transfer over their networks.
2. Make encryption illegal. You don't think they can? It just takes about three levels of judiciary to do it. Napster had non-infringing uses, but that didn't stop only two levels of the judiciary shutting it down.
>>Corporate profits are more important than the risk of violence against doctors and their patients? Yes. Exactly.
Well, as to the first point, it may be that free market competition may keep most pipes open and free. But think about it -- how free is the market now, and how free will it be after a few years of mega-acquisitions? Is it possible for all pipes to be owned in some sense by very few entitites, all interested in shutting down "copyrighted" material transfer? I seem to remember that some ISP's, especially cable TV companies that also owned broadband, had some scheme to detect constant large-sized data transmissions and block them -- because they would be video, most probably. Though I think it didn't happen. Think about it: if you had a fat pipe, what would stop you from narrowcasting HBO over the net? Or the Playboy channel? It's in the fat pipe owners best biz interests to keep speed or volume down. Or at least control it. As for competition, they'd be content owners too, most likely. Indy ISPs will be gobbled up like goldfish in the next decade by large IP conglomerates. Wanna bet? Sigh. Sucker bet, already is happening.
As for it happening only under commnism, uh-uh. A very small group of self-interested corporations can eventually buy up the pipes and content and then, in a sort of multopolistic cooperation like oil companies do, shut off the pipes for "pirates". Markets are only free if we maintain vigilance, and we ain't. It's a matter of supply and demand... they'll have the supply, and they'll demand anything they damn well like.
Hm. It may be that they can never monitor all traffic over the net. But they can however target select individuals and "make examples" of them. I know it's brutal and unfair, but these enforcers are without pity. They may make enough high-profile destructions of "pirates'" lives that others will stop attempting to use freenets.
As for your second point about encryption being non-controlled, I hope so. But remember this is a game of mindshare, and already people are sniffing that if you are encrypting traffic, you are doing something illegal. It's the old "if you're innocent, you won't mind peeing into this cup" idea that everyone has bought into.
I hope that "they", whoever they might be someday, will never have the computing power to recontruct the traffic bouncing over all those nodes. But remember -- they may indeed have it someday. Imagine quantum processors... who knows.
Remember that Aimster has tried using the DMCA to make decryption of it's own P2P traffic illegal. But I would say they will fail: at the sound of being fatalistic, the courts will side with the RIAA/MPAA etc. It's not the letter of the law the courts are enforcing -- they are trying to proactively "protect" corporate interests against "thieves". Remember the Napster case at all times...
I always like the wireless alternative to the wired internet, but wait -- it can be sniffed very easily. How about a rooftop network of ruby lasers, in reduntant arrays? That may be workable and private. I'll let you real tech people sweat those details out.
I'd just liek to close saying that it's not The Guvmint I fear, it's corporate power using governement force to maintain power and control.. and profits... at the expense of freedom.
Just thinking about how the software piracy battle has raged for years and years. I'm sure that those clueless people will be unable to get their MP3's. Just like software piracy really isn't in the open now, it will go underground and it will require some ammount of computer knowledge to get. Unfortunately, it will be a little tougher than software piracy since I think the RIAA is a little more committed to sticking it to everyone they can. Eventually there will be a backlash on them as they piss off everyone with lawsuits and close minded-ness. I don't think that will have everyone condoning MP3 use, but might make things such as the user choice radio station a reality.
-- Wolfpup
"A man whose circumstances went beyond his control." -- Styx
I bet you could sell 10x as many cd's as RIAA companies if you priced them at $4 and you could pocket like $2 of that pretty easily. Heck bump up the price to $6 (which seems to be the upper limit of resonable to me for a cd) and pocket $4 an album.
Alternatively start up a napster like service. Have it be an artist opt-in type service where the only songs traded are put on the network by the creators of the songs. Charge a subscription rate to everyone using the service (like $10 a month unlimited downloads). Then divide the profit (that is amount of money left after paying off the network costs and the people that write the software and keep the network going) between the artists based on the percentage of the total transactions there songs made. If there were 1000 total transfers of music (a very small number for an example) and your songs made up 100 trades, you get 10% of the profit.
I used to hate the idea of subscriptions but now I see it as the best way to avoid the hassel of enforcing intellectual property rights while still rewarding the people generating the service.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
Because people voluntarilly give them money.
Why do you consider it a prob;lem that some people who make something lots of people enjoy get payed for it? It has no negative effect on you. If you pay the prices you clearly think the work is worth the money. If you don't you are not impacted in any way by what the artists do or don't earn.
I suspect pure jelousy froma talentless kiddie.
_O_
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
Then CD producers will go out of business and all the worry about what the RIAA may or may not do is irrelevent. I doubt that will happen so I think the RIAA actions are a problem, but feel free to dissagree.
Buy a turntable, and open yourself up to a world of indie shit you'd have never cared about otherwise.
From your writing style I would guess I had a turntable and was buying vinyl before you were born.
And why would anyone download a crappy MP3 to make a CD of something they have on vinyl? I already have several CDs crated directly from LPs.
_O_
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
The artists seem to dissagree as most still want to sign with a company.
Record companies provide venture capital (as it were) and sales and marketing resources. The internet can't replace either role.
Yes you could become a cult band using your own money and word of mouth over the internet, but if you want to be the next Brittany Spears you need more infrastructure than that.
If you want to imagine a radical change which would preserve the rights of artists (and hackers) while loosening the power of big organisations, consider what would happen if it was declared that copyright could not be sold, only delegated for fixed terms (say up to 5 years), with all copyright lapsing a reasonable time after death.
_O_
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
It's bollocks for all languages. Take a look at a recorded waveform of normal English speech. The only noticable gaps (other than the speaker pausing to think etc) are likely to be in the middle of stops (T, P etc.)
_O_
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
I read it in Tomorrow, Inc. Thanks.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
>BTW> It "should" be impossible for the RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, AOL, or anyone to really change the dynamic of the internet so that all
>individuals recieve service where they can not accept connections. This would represent a fundamental change to the nature of the internet in a VERY
>bad way and would essentually "instantly" turn it into one big TV network. I do not think anyone would stand for that after they have seen it working the right way.
I believe RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, etc want very BADLY to turn the Internet into a big broadcast network. There are two models at work here, broadcast vs superhighway. The former allows 'them' to keep the control they had prior to the Internet, and allows their current revenue model to continue and grow. The latter is what we like.
Ironically, Microsoft is in the odd position here. The superhighway model helped them grow to where they are. But now that they've essentially saturated the market, they are moving to become a 'software broadcaster', and are moving in a common direction with the other big players you mention.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Damn, why do I never have moderator points when I *need* 'em ?
that dosen't change the fact that this is not correct in french you shoud say: Plus ça change plus c'est pareil the other expression is not good syntaxe ps: i am french canadian
to sig or not to sig that is the question
"The Internet is American. English only please." - *@aol.com on a Cuban newsgroup.
--
mrBlond
CowboyNeal for president!
"Hit any user to continue."
Actually, you can link to it! Here's the link. It's the URL of the article (http://slashdot.org/articles/01/05/05/1459212.sht ml in this case) followed by the comment number (57, as it turns out) used as a inner page reference (or whatever the W3C calls it).
When Slashdot creates it's HTML, it creates little anchors at the start of every single comment. You can actually do that in unarchived stories too... Strangly enough, when Slash archives posts, it DOESN'T change the little (#Comment ID) links to use this. I should submit a bug report about that...
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Or, come to think of it, SSL. Since SSL is a Socket Layer and wraps around the actual protocol that goes through encrypted, no ISP could ever block it - most users would be completely pissed if they discovered that their ISP had broken every e-commerce site under the sun. And I think users would find out when they go to use that fancy new Internet bill paying service their bank is hyping and when they try to log on it doesn't work. After all, I currently pay my cellphone bill online, and I know that a lot of non-Slashdot types are getting used to the idea of doing secure transactions online. And almost all of those involves HTTPS - or SSL.
And using SSL, you could run ANY protocol under it and your ISP wouldn't be able to tell what you were doing.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
By recording all your internet communications for 7 years. With helpful "guidance" from the US, the EU is going to propose its "cybercrime" treaty. Soon if you are in the US, you will hear the rhetoric "Well the EU is doing it, so should we". Read the docs at cryptome.org, it makes somber reading.
Do you seiously think EU law is going to stop anyone ? We allready have cybercrime laws in place in this fucked country as we speak, but that hasn`t stopped the people in it before. Of course they can allways sue 10 million people instead of just the latest 100 lucky ones (yes they actually did sue) but hey.. we`re Belgium where normal crime is easily seponnated (read: lack of personel in courthouses). Ofcourse they can also block outgoing and incoming routers to the rest of the world and log all traffic, but that`s just as practical as tryinng to impersonate a fishstick.
But it seems to me there is a bit of misconception on various points: There are no crimes in cyberspace. There is only incorrect law and ideology fools in meatspace. Hacking and cracking can be substituted by loging-in and reprogramming, and there is nothing intriniscally wrong about this. The _value_ of cyberspace and anything going on it (that means anything discretized in a digital form) is that what you estimate it to be, otherwise it is just the cost of current and telephony. Therefore, you can only loose money by spending that cost or seeing other people`s estimates drop. Harshly put, an economy based onsuch pure estimates is a gambling show, however, luckily this is a bit too harsh, as people add creative content to cyberspace. But by doing so they produce. The act of the production (=discretization of ideas) itself contains the risk of being ripped off. Tryig to prevent being ripped off is an understandable but week strategy, which depends on the mutual agreements between parties. Any one party can give up such an agreement anytime (and afterwards be sued for it of course). So people want to believe and forget about being paranoid, including the RIAA, because it fills pockets. As soon as parties turned out to not respect the superimposed 'agreement' in the form of a copyright, Napter came in, which has now given them a chance to sue, and possibly get even more money. The alternative would have been to sue everybody on this planet holding an ethernet link. Basicly the RIAA and MPAA are content providers that produce something which is non degenerate once digitized. They can`t possibly win this battle beause idiot A will allways be willing to give idiot B a sampled version of item C, which is not perfect but good enough for idiot B to pass it on to his idiotic friend D etc.. unfortunately the world is full of idiots, and there is only one RIAA and MPAA. How unfair, of course.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
well yes, obviously they want to protect the freedom of (payed for) speech (which THEY produced), you just need to read everyhing, including the fud between the lines.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
I used Napster for finding forigen tracks. This stuff for example korean rap, will most likely never be released in america.
The funny thing is for just about everything I search for on Napster is still available
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Which old days would those be? How many days like that were there? Is there, like, one day each year like that, sort of like a Sadie Hawkins dance?
Wake up and smell the marketing. The rock "stars" were never in charge. Muddy Waters, Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, the Beach Boys, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Parliament/Funkadelic, Bruce Springstein, the Talking Heads, Prince, Metalica, U2, Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Nirvanna, Hole, Garbage, Barenaked Ladies, Britney Spears... Every last one of them marched where they were sent.
Artists can chose what kind of music they want to play (and the labels then choose which artists to promote based on what kind of music they want to sell), but the labels are in charge of damn near everything else, until the artist is rich enough to go off and start their own label.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I disagree with Metallica's decsion to try to stop their trading on napster. I VERY disagree with their trying to get people kicked off.
However, I believe that they still deserve money, because they did write the music. If you feel differently, then dont send them money. Or buy the CD... then they get less.
--IronHelix
Very soon Microsoft will buy the companies that comprise the RIAA. Then the next version of Windows will automatically delete any file with the .mp3 extention. Microsoft will probably buy out the MPAA companies, too. Then that annoying paperclip (which isn't actually going away in Office XP, it's just not on by default) will pop up: "Hi! It looks like you're trying to view a DVD. Would you like me to 1) Verify your ownership of this DVD by using .NET to look up your credit card history or 2) Eject DVD?" But it's ok because by that time I will have ported BSD to my coffee maker so that it plays a (pirated? never) mp3 of the Maxwell House song while it brews my java in the morning. Ah, glorious coffee...you never sue for people sniffing the beans without a 36 page liscence. All you do is provide what I need to get me through a hard day of broadcasting my pirate signal and hacking into the Matrix. In Matrix 2, agents won't weild guns. Instead they will throw lawsuits at Neo.
---
---
Unfortunately there is the small matter of the Geneva convention on copyright, which means national borders no longer represent an obstacle to copyright litigation (provided the country in question is a signitary of said convention).
so you are dooming me to a life of starvation? or distributing my own music by myself.
If you have MP3 files, share them online
Ya, and also share all your warez programs that you copied
Keep up with the fight
Ya fight for your right to have free stuff! at the expense of everyone invloved that brought it to you
DO respect copyright
hmmm... ok, you just contradicted yourself by saying share music online that you have NO RIGHT to distribute, but still respect the copyright. Copyright includes the right NOT be be copied or distributed. There is no 'opt-in'.
-- "Perceptions create reality. By changing your perceptions you change your reality."
The RIAA realized that they could make a lot of money if they could control the electronic distribution of music. Many hard working citizens already developed the technology making this possible, the RIAA was to late, but they have allot of money. Now the RIAA is using its big money to push the hard working Americans out of the way so they can take back what they never had.
Its really sick if you start to think about it. How much of that $16.99 you spent for that last CD you bought really goes to the artist? How much of that is going towards legal teams destroying the hard work and dreams of American citizens? I'm a big supporter of a voluntary contribution system such as www.fairtunes.com. At least you know your money is going.
Solution: fairtunes.com
just how can it be a Troll?
At least WE get to fuck.
Check your history a little more closely - Search on 'Stationers Guild' rather than copyright. Pre-Statute of Anne, the publishers belonged to a Guild and the law protected them against each other so long as they agreed to censor anything the government wanted censored. This law did not have any expiration and therefore the 'copyright' was perpetual - until Queen Anne abolished the entire cycle.
m
Also, you should read the Constitution a little more carefully - you typed it out, after all - "by securing for limited times to authors" - hmmm, that sounds a little bit like it is an author's law vs. a publisher's law, just like the Statute of Anne. And the limited times thing is another aspect of the English Statute.
The United States does not support the 'Moral Rights' of an author, as does European law (though, being a signatory to the Berne Convention, we're supposed to.) Our copyright laws are SUPPOSED to promote the progress of the arts by offering creators an incentive. No longer, now it is used to protect publisher's profits - just like the Stationers Copyright.
Here's the direct link to Pamela Samuelson's paper: http://webserver.law.yale.edu/censor/samuelson.ht
Don't just complain - DO something about it!
I am not a lawyer. And I am not saying that the current legal system doesn't need a good dose of common sense. But to your example, I'm not even sure that Fair Use comprises making a backup copy of a work in the first place-- but how would they even know unless you start sharing the "backups". Software has frequently allowed single backups in its licenses, but I've never run across language in the laws I've read that lead me to believe this was explicitly permitted for CDs or books.
So OCR your books all you want, but as soon as you start sharing that work anonymously, over the internet, let me know. Otherwise you and your friend have a right to privacy that is going to make it difficult to discover this infringement, let alone prosecute it. And if it were discovered, I'm guessing a judge would rule in your favor, since you've both bought copies of the same edition of the book and presumably kept them-- even in their damaged condition.
The courts have tended in the past to be lenient on sharing when the copy was analog and not commercial. But now with digital copying and a heavy involvement of commerce (even though Napster users don't pay or receive any money for mp3s right now), they are tending to be less lenient. Personally I think they are not putting enough burden of proof on the plaintiffs, and that they are allowing the wrong defendants to be gone after, but I just vote here. My opinions don't actually matter.
I do not have a signature
CDs don't have licenses. They are restricted by law.
DVDs I don't know anything about. I consider region coding and CSS to be unacceptable constraints on usability (and personally feel they are unethical as well). Not to mention that it's primarily a read-only medium, which makes it useless for recording TV shows and stuff. I'll be keeping the VCR until this changes, I guess.
Software. *sigh* Try using Free Software. I know I did and I'm the only person I know who gives a sh!t about it. My American friends and coworkers couldn't care less about it, or region coding and CSS on DVD's, nor the need to buy new CDs when the old ones die from mishandling. If they're any indication of where all this is headed, well I don't know, but it won't be getting better-- and these are the so-called liberals.
I do not have a signature
Read the briefs again. 2600 is
- losing
their fight. The DMCA, which was bought by the mega-corps, is kicking 2600's butt. Sure, we all hold out hope that they'll win in the end because their case seems self-evidently "right" to the geek population. But it's not self-evident to legislators or judges. Never confuse justice with law, that's a good way to have your illusions shattered.Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
oh wait. that means that they are generally just like any other American company--just with considerably more money.
its really quite depressing.
The real problem (if i may venture out on a limb) is that the American public has shown for a considerable length of time now that they simply do not care how the corporations are taking over the legal system, and in effect, the entire country. Politicians pander to those with more money, true, but in the end that is only because they know none of the people who elect them care enough to not vote for them again even if their time in office reeked of scams and "dirty deals". However, if people really did react and take part in the political system, if people reacted by booting money-whores and corporate stooges out of office, you can bet the new lawmakers would work harder for the people.
Unfortunately, apathy and cynicism are rampant. It is a LOT of work and pain to struggle against the power of lobbyists and corporations. It is up to the people though.
It is so easy to sit here and bitch and moan about how the country is being chiseled away by corporate power. Even if you don't want to get off your chair and struggle yourself, support those who do: EFF, ACLU, 2600, Refuse and Resist etc... That is how you change things.
Cynicism and belief that the fight is hopeless are what we should really be moaning about...
Just my opinion.
--rhad
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
There's obviously something wrong with the music industry. How can so many musicians get so rich? Hopefully the end result of the mp3 movement will be that musicians start earning a realistic salary.
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
Huh.... the Babel Fish'd version makes even less sense to me...
OPERATOR: principal screen ignite.
MR. THE CAPTAIN: It is you!!!
MICHAEL: How are you Messrs.
MICHAEL: The more Ca changes, plus it is the same thing.
MR. THE CAPTAIN: What do you say!?
MICHAEL: You etes in the path with the destruction.
MICHAEL: You do not have a chance to survive made your time.
MICHAEL: Ah-hau hau hau hau.
Sigh....
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Or, at least, not RIAA music.
I've been buying World Serpent just fine since. :)
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
So, before then, strong encryption was illegal.
We still do not allow export of strong encryption except to specific countries. We don't care if this infringes on their citizens' rights to free speech, and if we felt we had something to gain from it, we wouldn't care if we infringed on our citizens' rights to free speech. But we don't have enough to gain to allow this to be instituted, especially if the "oh it's only so that people in totalitarian regimes" argument manages to win a large userbase to begin with. At that point, your two scenarios are worth looking at.
1. Allow corporations to block high-speed, high-volume data over their networks.
This would work beautifully. If we lived under communism. As it stands, another ISP will simply say: WE don't block it. Use us! And how about intranets? No ISP reigns over that... Allowing ISPs to block large-volume traffic means that people won't pay the ISPs for large pipes. If they only block encrypted info, that will work for awhile, but not forever. We are moving toward an era where an ISP won't have the computing power to even tell whether what you're pushing over port 80 is mime or english. especially not when you judiciously mangle the headers, heh. If they say: "No, we don't like that you're surfing such large files...." then we'll say "Screw you. Why am I paying for DSL through YOU then?"
Your second point is actually what I mentioned the France thing in relation to. It's possible, but don't hold your breath. As a practical note, however, even if they do outlaw strong encryption, 40 bit encryption is enough over a distributed network to allow most people to safely do whatever they please, until they are specifically targetted in a MASSIVE dragnet (to reconstruct the distributed info from all the nodes you communicate with and pinpoint you as the source of the information, or its requestor or whatever).
Also, remember, an ISP is just a commercial version of what I could set up myself if I wanted to get the government licenses. Once a solid wireless standard comes out, you know, my whole city will be a LAN whether an ISP is involved or not. (Less nerdy cities than Boston might not be so fast
~
Thanks, that's useful!
As long as you're submitting a bugreport, could you get them to embed some information so that threads can be reconstructed at a later date? It wouldn't be a lot, just "id of parent", even in an HTML comment if they like, but it would be very useful -- whenever someone develops a client-side parser, it'll make surfing old articles so much more interesting. We're losing a wealth of old discussion by ignoring parentage. (You can recover some of this today with re: samesubject rules, but people change subjects when replying....)
Peace.
~
Article says: Which is why I can't wait for the "Cult of the Dead Cow to go P2P" (previous slashdot article). Snippet: It's static HTML now, so I can't link it, but here's my post on that: (the gist of it is that "this P2P appears legitimate, and by its nature supports filesharing, so the RIAA can't complain unless they're admitting to trying to stifle freedom of speech)
I've frequently thought about how cool it would be if we could think of a "legitimate" use for the Gnutella network, so that
- an ISP can't possibly feel itself justified in shutting down anyone shoving gigabits through the Gnutella port (you've already heard about this probably...), and
- so the Government can't try to stop Gnutella (company?) from distributing Gnutella software (it wouldn't matter if it did: Gnutella's already out there and since it's P2P the government can't do anything to get gnutella company to shut down the service, but:)
- Or worse, to try to go after the users and to make it illegal to use gnutella! (Which isn't so farfetched...)
The government or RIAA can say today, "Look, there's no justification for using gnutella since it's basically only used for piracy, so anyone that's shoving data over it has every reason to be denied that right."But if we could say: "Uh, actually, it's just a distributed internet surfing system with encryption, which also happens to work as file-sharing as part of its distribution scheme, since it doesn't differentiate between html documents and binary documents, which isn't a meaningful distinction anyway since you can MIME encode anything into html if you want,"
THEN the government will be forced to say: "well hot-damn. We can't have ISPs shutting down distributed information sharing, which is the only thing WEB-SURFING can be construed as, since it would be a denial of freedom of speech (denial of right to know. Freeedom of speech, although IANAL, only is a meaningful right as long as those who want to listen to you have the right to listen to you.)
There's little the Government or any ISP could say against "It must be encrypted so that the information becomes available to users under a totalitarian regime. It must be distributed so that that regime cannot shut down a web server and cause the source of the information to cease."
The upshot: the government, your ISP, the RIAA, etc, etc, will have NO way of keeping the ENCRYPTED, DISTRIBUTED, "stuff" that you share from happening to be pirated. They can shut down Gnutella of today to some extent by making the software illegal to own, since they would be fairly justified in saying that it is used almost exclusively for illegal purposes. If you started doing web surfing over it, there is no such argument.
For this reason alone, all of us should start doing all of our surfing through this new system as soon as it's featurey enough.
Besides, at the very least, if we started doing that, then whatever we do websurf will be hidden from our ISP by being encrypted, and documents will probably come over much faster under a distributed system. Well, static documents would at least. Maybe this system would also serve to route you around faster, mimicking IPV6, so we could still do better to use it than surf straight. There's no limit to how much good we could get from doing all of our surfing through a distributed, encrypted system, and since the fact that it would make piracy easy is an inherent but small side-effect, it would mean that no one could stop it.
Long Live the Freeedom to Rip Artists Off!
(Which I happen to disagree with, but to a far less extent than I do with the RIAA's trying to force us not to share our files. If artists included an address to send money to in the extended descriptions fields of their MP3's [yes, artists should distribute their own mp3s], I know that I for one would take advantage of it and give them their due. As it is, it's far too much trouble and far too much of what I would pay would go straight to the record industry's pocket. That reminds me of a joke, which is actually a good analogy for why we share name-brand artists instead of no-name artists, even though name-brand artists are being whored out by the record industry.)
~
And the chances that the government will give the RIAA access to the info gleaned from this clipper-like thing? <Broad grin>. Upshot: we win.
~
Someone please mod this guy "funny". I'm ROFLing my ass off.
Now seriously, we're watching RIAA geting along suing everyone (even 13 year old kids) when in truth THEY are the ones to be sued for MONOPOLIST PRACTICES an FORMATION OF CARTEL.
Microsoft is not the only company in the world that should be broken in several smaller ones.
What ? Me, worry ?
"What?"
"Should I feed it or not?"
"Ummm...well, here's some TrollSmeg(tm) brand Crusty Niblets® I was about to trash..."
Oh dear God, why can't people figure this shit out? While I HATE what RIAA/MPAA/MegaCorp USA are doing to us, there's something to remember! Napster and its kind are merely tools, and are not designed expressly for any copyright violation. DeCSS, however necessary, has only one use, to decrypt CSS. OTOH, Napster, or Scour as a better example, can be used for sharing most anything with a little tweaking, and it doesn't have to be copyrighted music.
Yes, my head is not up my arse, and yes, I know 96% of Nappers are nabbers, but still, there are legitimate uses for it! I have two CD's from my college days (Korn - Peachy and GNR - Appetite) that I damaged during a move and was going to replace via Napster. Now I can't. But I have a legal license to the music and my originals are unplayable, so what do I do?
Oh, if people keep plying the same bullshit argument that digital copying is not theft, well then maybe we're too stupid as a society to have tools like Napster!
GTRacer
- Hoping society isn't that dumb...
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
If I trash my car (read book), I can't walk up to yours and take it-that's not my point. But if I have a Driver's License, then I can legally drive my car, your car, and anyone else's car who gives permission.
Why should using my backup or someone else's be any different as long as I'm only exercising ONE license?
These bastards want to have it both ways - they want us to purchase their stuff (CD's WinXP, Crouching Tiger) but then they want us to purchase a license for every situation - listen at work, backups, portable devices, etc, etc.
C'mon dammit, did I buy it or did I license it? I know that in a free-market system, they CAN write their EULAs any way they want. But should they? Should Congress et al. allow that? What happened to common sense like Borland's "Like a Book" license?
Who do I need to vote for and where do I need to live to get common sense back?
GTRacer
- RIAA/MPAA can license my ASS~!
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
Fred 0.4 is about to be released, and with the new friendlier windows client, use of the free network will surely skyrocket.
OK, I don't personally have time to work on freenet, but if I did, I think I would insist that there was a -core list for the platform and a -devl or something for the application level. Merely having seperate lists would help stop people confusing things so much. The group's most talented coders should concern themselves with improving the properties of the network. They don't need to track endless debates about "think cash", "metadata", or anything else application level. They should be ensuring that when I request a key, I get what I asked for, as frequently and quickly as possible (within the other constraints on the network's behaviour).
I also think that the project is sufficiently high profile that it's going to attract people to its mailing lists whose input is simply unhelpful. They're going to need to start moderating some of the lists at some point. (Just listen out for people squealing "don't censor me!").
As for my comment about sloppiness, that wasn't at all justified. Give me a chance, I was only trying to get back down to my -1 posting default. It's not my fault some moderator thought I was "interesting" or "insightful" or something.
--
--
They are currently powerless on the legal front. When legal strategies fail you go to your lobbyists. Expect the "Peer To Peer Intellectual Property Act" to be introduced in Congress any day now. Gnutella, Freenet, etc. can simply be declared to be illegal, placing them in the same boat as deCSS. This still won't stop people from using these programs or getting a hold of them, but the probability of such a law being introduced and signed into law is close to 1.
though we have a good, strong beachhead here
I'd feel a lot better if we had some nice cliffs
You rush a Miracle Man, you get rotten miracles - Miracle Max, TPB
And knowing is half the battle.
:)
Go Joe!
Don't take this the wrong way - it's not intended as targeted criticism - but there's a simple P2P mechanism that you're all overlooking. TCP/IP is the protocol used for the predominance of internet traffic, it is a peer-to-peer protocol, nobody is designated as a client or server, and anyone can route between the networks (peer groups) they are connected to. In fact, the world wide web could be considered an elaborate construct on top of the largest P2P network ever conceived. I mean, to get technical, tcp/ip has syn and ack which could be construed to define client and server roles, but napster/gnutella/etc all have similar features - they're necessary for the network model to function. P2P is an artificial distinction.
Am I the only person here who would insist on checking out a band on Napster before I'd buy their CD? (well, not 100% of the time, but close)
How does the RIAA justify that the advent of Napster spurred an increase in sales? Where is the "loss"? I can point my finger right at it - the loss is loss of distribution control. Picture this - we have a resource at point A, and a consumer at point B, but for B to get A, A must pass through middleman C who can levy whatever overhead he wants. Now say we found a way for all the A's and the B's out there to skip middlemen and connect directly (think "big computer network".. oh - hey, Internet!) to each other. I'll admit that yes, while this could become a bad thing if people didn't have social obligations - they do! How slick is a guy going to look when he pops in his make-out music CD for the ladies and they notice that his whole CD case is full of burns with hand-written Sharpie-ink labels? How slick would it be for a person to give a burned CD to his/her partner for the econo-liday of the week? My point is, people value originals and authenticity. This will definitely change with the advent of nanotechnological reproduction, and we have to recognize that we're entering an time where our normal business models break-down. How can you sell anything when it could be mass-reproduced with a simple common 3d-xerox machine? You'd have to sell it based on license. But if the license was just there to make you money, for what length of time would you be the intellectual property holder/sole beneficiary? 20 years? 28? It seems clear to me that this would stifle growth, and here's why: If all the basic needs were covered for free - food/housing/etc, what would we base our economy on? Entertainment, essentially. Now, when you define two different products that are entertainment oriented - say a walkman and a Batman DVD - it's pretty clear how they're different, so a person could be awarded IP rights, one is a portable, battery-operated music playing device, the other is a motion picture in digital format about a man who fights crime. Now what happens when you try to make a movie, say - Robocop, and Batman was already IP? Robocop is about a man who fights crime, it's an infringement! Wait.. no - he's a cyborg, Batman's a bat. Well, that's clear, but was it explicitly stated in the IP patent? No, it was a motion picture in digital format about a man who fights crime.. well - so if you were to try and define it _specifically_ on the patent, and you got every detail in there, then it's not generalized enough to cover anything but Batman.. Batman 2 wouldn't count because it has different characters and settings, if not a plot.
There's no middle-ground right now in the digital IP age, and it is currently being defined. To ensure our individual freedom to produce and innovate, it is important that the middle ground be less generalized, but not infinitely specific - and it is important for people to understand what it is that they're granting IP rights for. I think we should institute a new branch of the US Patent Office for computer-related technologies, and have a board of qualified (or maybe elected) officials review applications. Maybe something else would work better - anyone?
I like the analogy to the drug trade. How long has marijuana been illeagal in the US, (and a lot of other places)? Yep. We've pretty near wiped it out haven't we?
Less and less my friend. do u really mean that USA has an influence on Europe nowadays ? wake up man >Interresting theory.. if I'm not misstaken, USA stands for "United States of America"... you mean the USA dont have any incluence in Europe either ? ;-)
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
I'd like to see them shut down Espra, the bastards. They can keep the brain dead AOL(Time Warner)ers from getting a billion copies of the current top 10, but they'll never stop P2P.
The cybercrime treaty is great. Written by the Justice Department, the folks who made such a balls-up of the McVeigh case that they have less credibility than Dubya. We need to start voting for real candidates- if we all hate MS, MPAA & RIAA, why can't we see past the Republicans & Democrats?
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
The RIAA is more afraid right now than they will admit. They are powerful, but not invincible. The one thing that hits them harder than anything else is the power of economics. Do not support them, buy music directly from artists or support them in other ways such as by going to their shows.
Nobody can trace who inserted a particular file, and there is no way you can be forced to remove something once it's there. Even if someone requests a file directly from your node, their request could be the only reason it exists on your pc.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
> What I wonder is who is doing the community more
> good, Napster (who have encouraged communication
> and sharing) or the RIAA (who encourage
> closemindness and destroy that feeling of
> community.
I don't see how allowing tens of millions of people to thieve music without paying the creators and publishers of it as "benefitting the community," which is, of course, 99.99% (probably an UNDERSTATEMENT by several decimals) of what Napster was used for.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
> actually its copyright infringement. not theft.
So you don't go to jail or have to pay for what you infringed?
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
>> This "service" [by corporations] exists only to
>> the point that it facilitates the acquisition
>> of profit.
>
> It exists just as equally as it serves the
> interests of customers and workers. If it did
> not serve them, they would refuse to participate
> in the corporation
Which is to say, the profit of the workers (paychecks) and the profits of customers (goods for cash.) Which is to say, free-market capitalism, where no one can force you to buy a product or work for a particular wage at the point of a gun.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
> Thats the problem with the RIAA, they market
> shit which is the reason I cant find anything
> good on the Radio's or MTV.
Last time I checked, the "officially" available music on Napster, from this century anyway, was utter unlistenable crap that wouldn't know a catchy tune if it got bit on the butt by it.
Also, last time I checked, the music (and sophomoric poetry and essays) on NPR wasn't exactly something to rush down to the store over, either.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
> It's not theft. It's unauthorized duplication.
Yes, but the people saying "it's not theft!" are not saying that because they say it's unauthorized duplication.
They're saying "IT'S NOT THEFT!!!" because they believe they have some sort of moraly, holy right to enjoy the work of other people without paying those other people.
If you can't tell the difference, then you shouldn't be part of the debate, either.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
> Just because you've lowered the cost of
> distribution to near-zero doesn't mean you can
> ignore the cost of production.
And as I always point out, a $20 CD already IS near-zero cost of distribution when you consider the countless trillions of dollars in development of mechanics, electronics, shipping, and what-not over the centuries, and how much it would be without any of that. To earn enough to buy music in a couple of hours? My god, what an incredible accomplishment.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
Vote for me when I run-you'll know who I am when the time comes...and I am not fucking around...
you think it's easy, but you're wrong...
Bull****! You know and I know that most Napster users are pirates, plain and simple. It isn't about sharing, it's about stealing. Where is the business plan for paying the artists anything for their hard work, not to mention all of the production staff, ad agencys, etc.
Oh, I'm sorry, geeks don't have business plans...
BTW, those "evil" corporations are responsible for just about everything we have and own. See that computer your typing on? You think some mom and pop company is going to be able to finance the multi-billion dollar facility necessary to produce your microprocessor?
So quit listening to those Socialists. And always remember that right now that the Netherlands has a larger economy than Russia because Russia thought that corporations were evil too.
Brian EllenbergerYou definatly have a good point, but when I was talking about "P2P file sharing", I was referring to the widespread, open P2P networks like Napster and Gnutella. The basic "peer-to-peer" technology is old and has many uses, but it's these new widespread "file trading" networks that the RIAA and other "anti-piracy" advocates are really concerned about.
;) )
The P2P system has been around for a while, but mostly or entirely on small, local, closed networks. Napster et. al. is the first widespread application of this technology over the Internet as a whole and connecting thousands of users at once, as far as I know.
(BTW, if ya wanna get really nitpicky and technical, FTP is not really a P2P system, it's a client-server system. While you can send files and data in both directions, you still have a designated "client" (you) and "server" (the FTP server you're connected to). In a true P2P network, every node plays the role of both a client and a server. But I still see what you're talking about...
DennyK
Rights cannot be had by abrogating the rights of others. If your "freedom of speech" means disregarding the copyright of the artist and/or the recording company that the artist delegated the company to, then you cannot excercise your freedom of speech. Your freedom of speech does not mean you are entitled to a free microphone, air time on TV and radio, and a listening audience (this would be enslavement and robbery). It does mean that if you can obtain those things through voluntary means, then you have the right to say whatever you wish through utilizing them.
mp3 sharing is like a hydra. Cut off one head and two more grow in it's place. It still sux for the people who have invested the time and effort in these programs. They have lost the battle, but the war is far from over.
GreyPoopon
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GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
And I support the view myself to a limited extent. Sure, there are some artists who play simply to be heard, but 1) not all good music (IMPO) comes from such artists, 2) up until very recently this greatly limited the scope of such artists who didn't sign their potential money away to publishers. I don't live on the east coast, this means I'd have likely never heard of TMBG. heck, I lived in milwaukee wisconsin; how much good music would I have heard in my youth? Not much. 3) even tho someone can reach others, there isn't a "good" system for that yet. If the artist sets up a webpage, they have to pay for badwidth. OK, they can join napster, but who's going to search for them. They have to get their name out somehow (part of what a publisher's job is), or only a few searches will turn them up. And even if they do get a few fans, what I've seen happen with my roommate's band is that they find their song's retitled with credit to smashing pumpkins, TMBG, and a bunch of other bands, which means that few have any clue that they exist.
Now, mp3.com or a similar business could become an electronic publisher, which will be a central (or a few central) place where one can either test music based on popularity, randomness, or maybe just look for the newest bands. Also, with mp3.com a band could put up a certain number of their songs for free sampling, and sell the rest on the CD (or possibly have just a digital download, kinda like emusic (or like my memory says emusic had)). But then suddenly we have a central publisher(s) who's handling everything... hopefully they don't become as greedy as the RIAA did, and I think this model could work, but then when a bunch of P2P sites start popping up, it breaks the business model for them just like it breaks it for the RIAA.
But why should artists get paid? Because they are providing a serivce. Can't tip's just take care of it? It could, but how easy is it to track artists down, and even if everyone knows to go thru fairtunes, will that be "enough"? Frankly, I think that many artists should get enough compensation from their services that they should not have to work full/part time on other tasks to pay for equipment/food/housing.
Then CD producers will go out of business and all the worry about what the RIAA may or may not do is irrelevent. I doubt that will happen so I think the RIAA actions are a problem, but feel free to dissagree.
/. readers could use the tip on buying vinyl.
I don't. If the industry doesn't figure out a way to add value back into recorded music, then what you're saying will happen. CD producers will make data discs and nothing more. I'd like to see stats on how many CDRs were sold last year versus how many pre-recorded CDs were sold. Then I'd like to check in with that statistic in about 5 years. You may know more than you think.
From your writing style I would guess I had a turntable and was buying vinyl before you were born.
Probably, if you're old, and you probably are. I've been buying records since about 1990. Unlike you, however, I have no records made before 1990, except for irony value. I buy new releases on LP instead of CD, and not a lot of people can say that. Speaking of writing style, according to the Chicago Guide, you're supposed to have a comma in that sentence right after the word "style".
And why would anyone download a crappy MP3 to make a CD of something they have on vinyl? I already have several CDs crated directly from LPs.
So do I, and it was a tremendous pain in the ass to do. Sitting by my record player, making sure each song turns into a seperate mp3 is not my favorite way to spend an afternoon. I know there's software to do this for me, but unless I can't find it, I'm downloading it. Yeah, it can take hours, but unattended hours.
Anyway, I thought
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
Ah hah! Now, all of the sudden, people are more willing to stare at a progress bar for 2+ hours (if they're stuck with a modem), weed through the partial downloads and low bitrate crap, and spend another 45 minutes putting it onto a CDR and labeling it than pony up $17 for a CD. That indicates to me that people are NOT willing to pay the record industry what it expects for music anymore. They don't think it's worth it. The RIAA, instead of charging a fair price for music ($9-$10, the cost of vinyl LPs, or Fugazi anything), have decided to use the money WE gave them to turn around and sue outlets for free music. Does anyone else see a problem with funding an organization that might end up suing US because THEIR business practices are unfair? Why doesn't the RIAA react to their creation by adding value back into purchasing music beyond the digital content itself? How about a free concert ticket, or at least a discount on merch? The RIAA was thrilled about CDs because it meant they could increase profit margins. Now their greed has come back to bite them in the ass. And this is whose fault?? Ours?? Bullshit! I buy vinyl because it puts the pride back into owning a peice of music, along with the chance to get a peice of history in its original analog format. Buy a turntable, and open yourself up to a world of indie shit you'd have never cared about otherwise. Then use the license you just bought to download and burn the same thing onto CD (if it's availible online yet). The RIAA get its fair share, you get a quality slab for less, and MP3 survives. Plus, you can hang with the cool kids. Everybody wins!
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
I think most everyone is missing the fact that P2P has been with us since the beginning of the Internet. The day after the Internet came online with 4 nodes, one of those nodes became an FTP server. P2P is filesharing, and is nothing more than methods of transfering data from one person or organization to another person or organization and I use this legitimently every single day. Is it not P2P when I download the latest Linux kernel or grab RedHat 7.1 iso. Not to mention the fact that I use Samba to transfer files from my Linux box to my Wifes Windows box on my home network.
The problem isn't that there aren't any legitiment uses for P2P, because there are plenty. The problem is we are trying to find a legitiment use for P2P which justifies downloading music, the copyright holder may not want downloaded from Napster or Gnutella.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power - Benito Mussoli
The "Music Consumers of America Association" or an international dito and sue the pants off the RIAA for cartel-(now how the hell is that spelled?)building and monolopolizing.
We, the cd buyers are the ones who pay their salarys in the end. If we could organise enough pepole we could become an economic force to be reckoned with, and it might actually work.
What I would like to see is that it would be illegal for one record company to have the exclusive right to one recording. That way real competition could get going. You license the recording from the artist (a recording isnt the expensive part, and can be made in independent studios). The artist gets a fixed royality deal with each label that wants to sell their music, and they get to compete by selling the same cd, but with different packing, and an opportunity to compete with pricing.
This is done today too, small labels takes on new artists and tries to sell the distribution to a bigger company. As in the gaming industry where we have small development companies and large distributors. The difference would be to prohibiting exclusive deals.
Would this work? I dunno. But it might give more power to the artists and lower the cd prices.
...um...like...a sig...
The BSA has only managed to take down one irc channel (#warez4cable on Dalnet), a few bbs's back in the 80s, and web pages. The RIAA has never been on Undernet or DALNet for #mp3_metal or all the other ones that offer thousands of mp3s. Not to mention all the alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.* I ripped about 100-200 albums from my collection, I now have 130 CDrs of full albums of music, all from newsgroups and the irc. It comes out to be about 1200 full albums of music. It would take about a 90gig drive to hold all of them. I can go into any mp3 irc channel and pull up full albums by the gig. If they bring down one, another couple will go up. I could offer mp3s on my bbs if I wanted to, ftp sites still live...sheesh! Will they ever figure it out?
telnet://metaledge.dynodns.net Metal Edge bbs!
Nope. RIAA, means Record Industry Association of America. They don't give a crap about the artists.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Too right it is! I use Napster to keep myself supplied with (otherwise unobtainable) Asian music, and the amount of non-American content on Napster has hardly changed. Hooray for the American Way.
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Isn't it time someone put all the facts together- the real breakdown of costs in producing/marketing/selling/distributing music, what goes to who, the 'Constitutional' rights and protections that citizens get versus the RIAA (lifetime of the artist + 70 years isn't it!?), monopolistic actions against new competitors, broadcasting fees, any untoward action towards artists considering alternatives (e.g. Prince's name change, etc...), regular fact based debunking of RIAA disclosures, etc in one place (i.e. website)? Collect the information, organise letter writing/demonstrations, acted completely within the law (so the RIAA et al won't have a leg to stand on), organised boycotts, seek media attention, buy advertising etc. Isn't it time you American's got of the couch and started doing something about this? (BTW- personally I won't agree with or use Napster et al until it's possible to pay the artists- personally I reckon there should be a mandatory minimum fee (to cover costs of recording in a quality studio and for the costs of running the servers etc- someone has to pay for power!) + an option for 'tips'- good artists would probably then supply you with something extra- and you're more likely to give them a good tip again next time....)
For the last time, if I already ***OWN*** the performances on RIAA-sanctioned media, which I actually paid for, and I then grab an mp3 of it, to put on CDR (because I'm either too lazy to rip one myself, or don't want to dig out the old turntable), and then listen to them on my mp3 CD player - an Expanium, which rocks, BTW - I AM NOT A CRIMINAL. Period. -The Dog
P.S. Like my sig on the Napigator message boards says, "Hilary Rosen can kiss my ass."
Where is there no law? What about the ocean? Broadcasting off a boat is easy with a little invention called a satellite.
Let's be practical. Would you want to maintain a boat in the middle of the ocean for years? Isn't sinking a potential hazard?
Not worth the trouble, I think.
So, what power would they have over, for example, over a P2P development effort hosted in Europe?
The RIAA works with the IFPI, an international version of the RIAA, protecting artists (copy)rights worldwide.
Also, the Berne convention allows countries to purse copyright infringement in other countries.
Pro-copyright entities have most of the world covered.
What I wonder is who is doing the community more good, Napster (who have encouraged communication and sharing) or the RIAA (who encourage closemindness and destroy that feeling of community.
Please. You've got to be kidding. Napster is doing good? Napster is as greedy -- and as astute as any corporation out there. Even more so.
Recall the "March on Washington for Napster?" It's the naive people that actually took this seriously -- as seriously as if Napster claimed that "file sharing" was a "civil right."
What people must understand -- and be able to perform in their technology analyses [i.e. posts on Slashdot] -- is that corporations are out for one thing: profit. To believe otherwise is to fall prey to corporate spin: "Oh no. We believe in you. We believe in the people. We believe in the rights to share files. Share warez. Share porn. Whatever. Sharing is your *right*!"
It's spin, my friend. Slick corporate spin. I urge you to kick your shit detector up a notch and realize that corporations are not our friends. None of them are. Not even those who (as Napster once did) claimed that they were working "on our behalf" (sorta like the spin on MP3.com. "Why are your files locked? Well, certain corporations want to keep you from listening to music for free! But rest assured, we at MP3.com are *working diligently* to restore your music."
It boggles my mind -- first, the idea that a corporation is working on my behalf and second that people actually believe this. ("Oh thank you MP3.com! Thank you for tirelessly working day and night to restore my music!")
Corporations do not care about consumers. They want you to believe they care. And if you do believe, they are happy. They've successfully spun their greed into some sort of wacked philanthropic notion that, gee whiz, we actually care about the customers that we bilk for bucks.
*Corporations only care about consumers as long as those consumers are able to contriubute to the corporate bottom-line.*
Where's Napster now? Where's their "Marching on Washington?" How come they're not rallying the troops anymore? Looking back -- and this wasn't this long ago -- I can't believe that successful hype machine that Napster had. Grassroots lobbying organizations. Marches on Washington. Letter writing campaigns. Front page stories on CNN and MSNBC pimping the 'Patel Decision. More to follow.' Breaking news.
You'd think they were involved in something important.
The unfortunate consequence of all this greed is that the technology (copy protection) and laws to stop it may adversely affect actual fair use provisions of copyright.
This may all be true but just how much clout has the RIAA got in the rest of the world. It seems this is more like the 40/128 bit encryption fiasco. Where the US Gvt. banned export of strong encryption. So software manufactures 'allowed' plugins from countries that would beff up their encryption. Netscape and Fortify spring to mind hear.
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns
This treaty is in the process of being quietly dumped, because the ISP's are demanding that the EU pay for the storage.
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns
After having something like freenet deployed and running (combined with, e.g., gateways for FIDOnet) it's gonna be a Hydra-like beast. Ultimate freedom should be very attractive for developers in those countries.
True. Of course, the Berne convention means that copyright violations are treated similarly (almost) everywhere, but the judgement against Napster was very dubious even in American law, since teh servers only held indexes. Most judicial systems don't roll over for big business quite as easily as the US. I can't imagine the Dutch or Swedish courts being quite as generous. and what about the countries that never signed the Berne convention? Lunatic though the US government's attitude is, I can't imagine them using sanctions against countries whose courts rule against RIAA.
So, what power would they have over, for example, over a P2P development effort hosted in Europe?
Not being a resident of the US, the more I read, the more I think that the right to free speech is an illusion, a modern day opiate for the masses, if you will.
About the only thing that seems to be left in the Constitution that has any power is the right to bear arms, which only seems to come in handy for those days when school has been a real bitch...
Mainstream: The downfall of p2p systems A P2P concept of napster and its clones, that focuses on the sharing of mainstream content, will only function if the sharing system itself remains mainstream.
You, the user, provide content for the user*.
This means, that if the amount of users decline, so does the content. The "big-boys" are also only concearned with that which is mainstream. Its profit, and profit will be fought for. They wont give a damn about gnutella and the likes, if they stay small. Once they're mainstream, the hammer falls.They will initiate lawsuits against the potential driving force behind the concept. The first to fall, are those commercially involved. Those that remain are the innovators that "develop for the good of mankind"(take that with a pinch of irony, if you will.. for it is partially intended) and the users: You and me.
The innovators will be pressured, until their activities are halted - for they are dependant on the system that twarts them. This is the most obscure part of the procedure, for it involves a complexity, that allows the procedure to exist.
In short: The "bigboys" will find ways to affect the innovators. In the market, their careers will be controlled in such a way that they will innovate for someone, rather than for everyone. Futhermore, their resources and their access hereto will be controlled. Their means of distribution will be controlled, directly, or indirectly. If the programmer cant be touched directly (though he will be, eventually), you go for his means of distribution.
Isp, host, whatever - they're all entangled, and subject to the complex system that is capitalism.
The rhethoric is simple:
If you provide so-and-so as a service, you can forget this contract. Now, you've got to ask yourself. Where's the profit? So-and-so-non-commercial-client or us?
Though the software may remain legal indefinately, it has become tabu, because the "bigboys" want it to be.
In anycase, and I stress this, its no longer mainstream.
The average joe wont know about it, and thus it looses its potential
So its back to obscure systems designed for shadowy-content hunting. Limited to those with the knowledge, but limited also to their own taste.
A farvel to diversity - at least for a while, until structures are established, where the lighter side of capitalism enforced innovation amongst the bigboys.
David's been trampled on, and now the giants are left to fight it out in the ring, or so it would seem.
Mainstream vs. diversity. (some paradox, huh?)
Final note: I brought about many points, in a somewhat disorganized fashion. The logic may have slipped somewhere along the way, but I should very much like to hear any view points on the topics brought up, in anycase. * This statement is only true in a certain context (as statements tend to be), for in the end, the content is generally provided by artists that are controlled by "big-boys" (If the term annoys you, I beg your pardon, but I have grown fond of it, in this context).
That doesn't make them a radio station, mind you (though they do streaming- using Quicktime :P ) but I couldn't help noticing that they were totally not mentioned at all in the Salon article. Maybe that's good. Flying under the radar, eh?
All I care about is, they have a terrific artist's agreement/contract, and they have just gone live on their CD program- which allows for selling CDs online that are duped FROM RED BOOK MASTERS. Yes! REAL CDs! And they hold no monopoly on that, they're just the first to go that far. The more indie internet 'labels' selling full-on CDs over the net, the better. Indie is NOT just all about mp3 anymore. We have control of the means of production >:)
All commercial rights reserved: noncommercial copying allowed
It is impossible to drive up the costs and risks of free access to THAT sort of music, because if the freeness (like grateful dead concert tapes...) is authorised by the copyright holder, the legal system supports it.
The legal system does not make any guarantee that the MEANS of communication of this free stuff is protected, and this is worth watching out for. But as long as there are people wishing to further electronic distribution of 'just the bits' of their creations, there will be means of doing so. The trick is to try to get one of those methods to go mainstream on as big a scale as mp3.
Finally, as an artist, I am not saying that the RIAA is NOT going to make it difficult for me to legally offer my music for download. They will, to the limit of their ability. They have also been involved in price-fixing and tied to the Mob, and certainly would not balk at 'cutting off my air supply' just because I wasn't affiliated with them, quite impersonally. They can and will TRY to do this. They are.
I'm just saying- the law is on MY side here. For that matter, so is capitalism ;)
13% of gross? *ROFL!* Talk to some insiders. Talk to some _lawyers_. The situation is a heck of a lot worse than that, let me tell you. If you're really interested, go read this book: it's _by_ an entertainment lawyer. "All You Need To Know About The Music Business", by Donald S. Passman. Especially part II, "Record Deals", which covers every imaginable aspect of that '13%' and many that you would not have begun to imagine, or even think possible.
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"The Gentrification of Intellectual Property".
There are haves, and have nots. If you're a have not, get ready to pay the rent, or be evicted.
If you're a have, get ready to pay tribute to your lord - er, I mean campaign contribution to your congressperson.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Ok, what war are you trying to win?
If your goal in life is to get music for free without compensating the content creators... in other words being leeches upon society. Then Napster is who you should support.
If your goal is to fight the chokehold that the RIAA has on copyright law as it applies to say things like DMCA, copyright extensions, etc. then you should be lobbying Congress.
If your goal is to fight the unfairness of RIAA contracts with music creators in terms of sharing profits fairly, control of copyrights, etc. Then you should be lobbying Congress on behalf of artists.
If your goal is to try to create a new grassroots music distribution system where new artists can distribute their content with low startup costs and no commitments. Then maybe you should have been supporting mp3.com.
I'm having a hard time buying these arguments of community and public good on behalf of Napster. All I see is parasites and leeches.
If you are giving away music which you didn't create yourself or have distribution rights for... it's called piracy or theft.
Well we live in a universe of scarcity of resources, so your arguments are only theoretical.
I don't think you quite understand the point.
:(
You can still buy cocaine in the United States, despite it being illegal.
But it's not easy. You have to go through some risks and effort to get it.
Of course the distributors of cocaine also face risks and effort and so they charge a lot for their product.
Now back to the music...
You will always be able to get copies of music.
But the RIAA is going to make it difficult for you to do so, at least on the internet.
Unlike Cocaine, the RIAA wins by making it difficult for you to do so because they can drive up the costs and risks of the "free" music such that it becomes anti competitive with the CD's that you can buy in any store on any street corner in any city of the US.
I've come to find people who use the term FUD are usually just stupid.
Large (>1mb) low-entropy data transfers originating from a dial-up/cable subscriber box, could raise a red flag. Other red flags could be whether the box receives much port 80 traffic, whether traffic patterns from it are typical of a server or a consumer box (they could possibly even have neural networks trained to detect these things), and so on.
A SSL connection from a dial-up/cable machine to a well-known server on a high-bandwidth line is one thing. A SSL connection from one home user to another could be considered suspicious. Indeed, it is easy to imagine the courts ruling that consumers have no more legitimate reason to transfer large amounts of data from each others' machines than they do to decrypt DVDs (and in the latter case, there were "fair use" arguments for being able to extract DVD content, but they were struck down).
The US legal system operates on the auction principle, where the favourable ruling goes to the highest bidder. And the RIAA can outbid consumers, the EFF, and those pinko librarians and academics.
Some years ago, it was the "Information Superhighway"; now it's "E-commerce". The Internet, as the public uses it, is becoming another home shopping network. Once 99.9% of people only connect to corporate servers, that becomes standard practice, and it becomes easier to crack down on deviant uses, such as connecting to other users' machines. Or even connecting untrusted clients to the Internet.
The RIAA's next tack will be to sue those writing, releasing and hosting software designed to evade enforcement of copyrights. Which happens to coincide with software designed to enforce other restrictions. And with the DMCA in place, and their legal resources, they can win this one.
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And will encrypted connections also be outlawed? (e.g.: SSL-protected HTTP connections; also: Freenet) If so, how will secure e-commerce continue? If not, how will they be able to detect P2P?
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Brent J. Nordquist <bjn@visi.com>
Brent J. Nordquist N0BJN
P2P systems are lacking in once significant regard: If the other "P" you're downloading from signs off, you're done... Transfer Incomplete!
Now, with something like the "old" Napster, this was an acceptable limitation, since there was no "official" and legal method to obtain most songs there. You kinda new the risks of aborted transfers and crap-quality rips and slow peer connections, but since it was free - no complaint.
Why on God's Green Earth(R)(C)(TM)(Patent Pending)(etc) would I PAY some company for the "rights" to the above P2P limitations and difficulties? If I were going to join a subscription service to get RIAA approved downloads - it would most certainly have to be a centralized, mirrored, high-bandwidth, dedicated, reliable repository with high-quality files. This would NOT be a P2P system! Yet all of these articles I read state over and over how such-and-such P2P system is now owned by some RIAA member, or this other RIAA member has announce this-and-that subscription P2P system. ACK! Get real!
Oh well, that's my rant for the week~
I AM, therefore I THINK!
Je suis Anglais.
Don't discount freenet yet. I know some of the central developers and they are incredibly badass coders. The overall project has a lot of featurecreep (when writing features appears in Doonesbury, there's something funky goin' on).
;)
But despite that, there's a growing community of freenet users. There are stable websites posted within freenet. (And I hear rumor that a few webcams are soon to get linked in to the system).
One of the central problems with maintaining gnutella during a RIAA attack will be maintaining repositories for getting your first host. Freenet pages can mitigate this, and/or provide its own transport/trading system.
Other problems, such as attacking ISPs if their users have gnutella ports open, and attacking the main developers like bearshare and limewire are separate issues, but still very relevant. It might be a good idea to start dealing with these while the RIAA is occupied with Aimee--I mean, Aimster.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
Jesus, what a depressing piece.
At least she didn't mention Freenet. Let Gnutella face the fire while Freenet gets off the ground.
I wonder whether she actually knows about Freenet, and chose not to mention it by name. She said, "Collective projects that are free from any corporate ties are still flourishing, and small companies with nifty ideas lurk on the fringes." And from reading previous pieces by her, I know she's got more than half a clue when it comes to file-sharing.
Where is the business plan for paying the artists anything for their hard work
Right here: www.fairtunes.com
I listen to jazz music you wouldn't have heard of
This is evidence of failed marketing, then.
Of course, the RIAA isn't solely to blame for this. The corporations that own the radio stations must share culpability as well. Why, for example, can I find no less than 6 of those bland Lite-Rock/Mix stations on my radio dial? And then, when they finally re-introduced an alternative rock station here last week after many years without one, they took away the unique R&B oldies station instead of one of the Lite-Rock clones.
If Rob Kaper and I don't hear your beloved jazz music on the radio, it's because the music industry has decided not to market it to us in an effective manner. Releasing music is not the same as marketing it.
For the first, I forget the title. But it was about an unspecified era in which aliens try to 'help' us by giving us replicators.
"Business As Usual, During Alterations" by Ralph Williams; first appeared Astounding in 1958; anthologized in Prologue to Analog, Tomorrow, Inc. , and One Hundred Years of Science Fiction.
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
To be on your side for a moment, now we need to invent a new protocol. TCP is great, but that blasted SYN packet just sticks out like a sore thumb. We need to move our hiding down to a lower level. (Actually, I'm completely on your side, just a bit more pessimistic.)
One word: NFS!
Artists bypassing the recording industry and taking advantage of the new egalitarian distribution medium (the Internet) is the obvious sloution that is always brought up in these discussions.
The problem is that for current established artists, there is significant momentum and acceptance of the current system. I think it has less to do with laziness and stupidity than a fear of an unknown, largely untested paradigm. To some degree, this fear is not entirely unfounded.
This issue sort of parallels the discussions of Linux on the desktop that were taking place a couple of weeks ago. I can make rational arguments to my company management about why it might make sense for us to switch to Linux and other open source software on the desktop, but the company is run by established businessmen who have done things a certain way for a long time, and what they have been doing largely works. They just don't see that the benefits of the change outweigh the costs and perceived disadvantages.
So, don't count on established artists to make the change. It will be new and upcoming artists that will see the new distribution medium as a viable option, just as it will be today's college students that will push Linux onto the desktop once they go forth and start their own companies. But unfortunatly, this means that the transition will take time. It won't happen overnight. Once the first new artist makes it big this way, then perhaps it will snowball and become a popular means of distribution.
By recording all your internet communications for 7 years. With helpful "guidance" from the US, the EU is going to propose its "cybercrime" treaty. Soon if you are in the US, you will hear the rhetoric "Well the EU is doing it, so should we".
Read the docs at cryptome.org, it makes somber reading.
OK the RIAA would like you to turn off the internet now...
I payed for the music. I'll listen to it where and how I please.
If this continues I'll go underground, stop buying and start stealing...
That what these people want?
realkiwi
is called a gnubrary. Pretty simple really. I can drive to the library and get a ton of cds or music. Why can't I drive there with my computer? Just make the app officially a part of the library (laws are good for this) and then none of the materials ever have to leave the "property".
--
+&x
I think you missed the point of the article. Nowhere in the article is it claimed that MP3 as a technology has been taken over by the recording industry, just that for profit businesses based on either MP3s or P2P have been assimilated. In fact, the author specifically mentions that the technology continues to thrive.
- Rev.Nice post. Instead of hyperbole we have actual historical facts. Wish I had mod points to burn. - Rev.
BTW, California has a larger economy that the Netherlands OR Russia, largely because of geeks with business plans.
I'm sure somehwere there IS a business plan for paying artists, but no one part of the RIAA has it. Their plans only include selling them into slavery. Funny, the recording budget for a major RIAA-type release is up to $100,000. Dave Grohl built his own fucking studio for that much and can record all the records he wants without paying the labels a cent. Now THAT'S capitalism.
Skip the RIAA, boys and girls, it's DIY or get screwed! Sure, their racket (and I use the word advisedly) on distribution channels means you'll have to pay a little "protection money" sooner or later, but it's better to negotiate with them AFTER you have enough of a following to drive something like a fair bargain. Those extra years of being a "starving artist" will be major street cred once you Get There. Look how long those millionaires called Metallica have milked it!
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
There's little any Government would have to say against that. Unfortunately, that "little" reads as follows:
"Oh shit, that also means us!"
It would therefore be followed up with a ban on use of the software, with draconian penalties.
yeah, i'm sure it's less in reality -- i just wanted to pick a 'conservative' (yet pathetic) %.
god is just pretend.
OK, the RIAA is evil. I concede that point. The labels rip off the artist. That pretty much has been proven (see Courtney Love's article). Many
Sony is part of the "evil empire'. How many of you guys rushed out to buy a PS2 the second they were available? Congratulations, you just put money into the pockets of an RIAA member.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Learning in school means:
- Our information comes from an "authority". This authority has very little accountability.
- Our behavior is checked absolutely by an "authority". Again, very little accountability.
- Our ability to change the _system_ while we are learners is almost nil. We might be given small scraps of superficial ability to respond to the teachers' performance.
Most people are satisfied with this system of education because we are aclimatized to it so early in our lives. The internet and the web are really opportunities to change this circumstance by creating a new educational system which is not autocratic but community oriented, not arbitrary but meritocratic, and most of all, not rigorous but incredibly flexible and dynamic and interactive. Knowledge is created by communities, its worth is determined by communities, and spread freely within communities. Why shouldn't education reflect that!!! Please check out Oomind which is an attempt to create a new educational system which works on these principles - its brand new so please forgive the dearth of content. Instead, contribute something!!!http://www.oomind.com/
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
Point taken, if that is indeed the crux of the article then I missed it. However I think it's worth debating whether napster or mp3.com actually ever did (or will) make a profit...
Given their mention of gnutella though, I suspect that they are merely not considering the full set of download tools available, not just the for profit ones.
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
I seem to remember the RIAA threatening a group of researchers at Princeton when they tried to present a paper on audio watermarking and SDMI. If that's not censorship, then I'm not sure what is.
--------
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
I used to pirate mp3s years ago via IRC and ftp sites. The pirating will always go on its all just a matter of how hard it is to do. There are so many alternatives to Napster already they are going to have a hard time doing much to combat the problem. They may force the problem into the underground but they wont elimnate it. This is very similar to America's Civil War, err I mean the war on Citizens of the United States who use drugs. What I don't understand is why this isn't obvious to everybody. I guess many of us just choose to keep living in denial.
Plus ca change
Don't you mean cha-ching? This is the RIAA we're talking about, after all...
--
But somewhere you still need the ability to accept connections, even if you're tunnelling and effectively reversing the direction.
I'm on cable, and as far as I can tell, NO cable allows you to accept connections. My specific TOS says 'run no servers for the use of others'. I run SSHD, and justify it because it's a server for my own use, not others. I know the restriction stinks, but it's the only way I can get a high-speed connection. I have grudgingly traded accepting connections for bandwidth. If/when DSL ever becomes available to me (43,000 ft from CO) I'll revisit that tradeoff, but not before I review the DSL TOS, too.
The ability to accept a connection is the new chokepoint.
To be on your side for a moment, now we need to invent a new protocol. TCP is great, but that blasted SYN packet just sticks out like a sore thumb. We need to move our hiding down to a lower level. (Actually, I'm completely on your side, just a bit more pessimistic.)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
#1 Send the requests through an intermediate node, but download the file directly from the server.
or
#2 Force the intermediate node to download the file, then to double the bandwidth used and send the file again.
If #1 is the case, you are doing just what Gnutella does.
If #2 is true, which a few have claimed, FreeNet bandwidth use will be exponential, subject to bottlenecks from slower nodes, and ravaging the bandwidth of ever node without and benefit to the user.
So, while in this stage of development it's hard to say how things will work out, either FreeNet will be no better than Gnutella, or it will be unusable because of the incredible ammounts of bandwidth required to transfer an single file.
---=-=-=-=-=-=---
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
As long as the public knows the law, and knows their rights, RIAA can't stop decentralized networks like GNUTELLA (and no, FreeNet does not offer any more anonymity or protection than Gnutella) because there is no single entity to shut down or hold responsible.
Follow these legal guidelines, and RIAA will likely stregenthen the community, rather than even slightly harming it.
---=-=-=-=-=-=---
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Fight Spammers!
If the government were working so effectively to control communication between citizens, we'd be talking tyranny and armed revolution. When corporations do the heavy lifting on their behalf, we bitch and moan on Slashdot.
Yet any system that allows distribution of copyrighted materials despite the wishes of powerful interests is invaluable for a parallel purpose: trading ideas and information that the government would like to suppress.
For example, Daniel Ellsberg might well have distributed the Pentagon Papers via P2P. Secure P2P could have been used to distribute suppressed writings in the former USSR in place of laboriously mimeographed samizdat. Not long ago, Linda Tripp held tapes that could destroy the president of the United States-- a terrifying position. Nowadays, she might post them on Freenet.
The existence of a mechanism for ordinary people to trade information by a means uncontrolled by elites shifts the power balance in an important, positive way. But here's a chilling thought: almost the same words were spoken in the early days of radio. People celebrated it as a new, uncontrolled medium for public expression of ideas that would enhance democracy in America. Now major stations are controled by media megacorps and low-power radio is flat-out illegal. Is this the future of P2P?
With certainty, there will be further occasions when the public needs to communicate through channels outside government control. The moment some politically explosive document is released on Freenet, the Supreme Court is going to take a very different view of P2P. I hope Freenet lasts long enough for this to happen.
Perhaps one need not reinvent the wheel in figuring out how to oppose RIAA and MPAA. Many organizations have a long history of fighting powerful interests and well-established techniques. It's remarkable that a fringey, but dedicated outfit like Earthfirst! manages to be more active than the 50 million Napster users combined. That need not continue.
Explain this to me. A website that posts the personal information, pictures, "Wanted" posters, and other information that has incited violence against abortion providers doesn't get censored because it is a "free speech" issue, yet the courts see fit to censor 2600 for posting links to DeCSS. So we have to protect corporate intere$ts, but g0d forbid we censor a bunch of militant Christians. I'm not advocating that we censor their site, as I'm all for freedom of speech, but where is the line drawn? Corporate profits are more important than the risk of violence against doctors and their patients?
It's not theft. It's unauthorized duplication. They are both illegal, but they are not the same activity at all. If you can't tell the difference maybe you should pipe down during debates like this.
.wav files BEFORE you damaged the discs. You don't have a legal license to anything. You have physical artifacts that are now unusable. Your argument for d'ling the songs via Napster is akin to saying you have a right to completely photocopy someone else's copy of a book because you dropped a cup of coffee all over one you bought once.
As for your damaged CDs, perhaps you should have backed them up onto tape cassette or
I do not have a signature
Anyway, they seem to contradict themselves when they go on to say: Err, say what? How in the world could the RIAA possibly "shut down" gnutella? Even if they were to sue the devlopers into oblivion, that cat is already out of the bag and having kittens! What are they going to do? Enter everybody's home and check their HDs for a copy of gnutella? Even if they were to sue a few pimply faced geeks for trading music online in a high profile case, they would be sowing even more ill will with the public (i.e., the people who line their coffers).
Is it me, or does Salon's pronouncement of victory for the RIAA seem less than a forgone conclusion?
-- Shamus
Brain for sale, hardly used, low miles. Inquire within.
I don't know about anybody else, but Gnutella seems to be working better all the time. I've had no problem finding even obscure stuff I've been looking for. And no matter what the RIAA sez, shutting down Gnutella would require some pretty draconian action.
Surfing slowly, in the Bandwidth Ghetto
The only trouble is, development is being held back by sloppy, haphazard software "engineering" and creeping featurism (before the basic network is even functional).
The lists are flooded with the technically illiterate, who are just along for the ride, and the politically extreme, who want to "destroy global capitalism".
As far as I can see, what was once the most promising p2p platform is now stewing in its own faeces and will fizzle out gradually, to be replaced by an ever changing plethora of http-based systems.
The developers don't even know whether freenet is a Java program or a network protocol.
--
--
The huddled masses will always win (perhaps not without suffering). But we got the money they want, and more importantly the guns. The RIAA might be dealing from the bottom of the deck, and being generally sneaky and deceitful bastards, but we've got an ace up our sleeves. But best of all we have technology on our side. And knowing is half the battle. Time to down load more foul Britney Spears singles in protest. No one said being moral was easy.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
I know there are more than a few artists and independent labels that AREN'T under the thumb of the RIAA. Some of them are even favorable towards P2P-type distribution. A few of them actually have talent, too.
How hard would it be to set up an open-source ethos internet radio station to showcase these works, and thereby bypass the big companies control over what new songs get heard? A non-profit station with no commercials or fees to artists or consumers? A real station, with DJs that have personality and producers who actually know good songs when they hear them and can build a decent playlist?
Well, it sounds like a good idea to me, anyway. If the songs were halfway decent it could really suck the wind out of the radio/record companies' sails.
cryptochrome
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
It is an association of music-industry conglomerates.
These conglomerates own the rights because they purchased them from the artists.
The system seems to be:
- Lure young, stupid, talented artists, and convince them to sign onerous contracts.
- Gussy them up and present them as the sole progenitors of their creativity and marketability.
- Discard them, retaining the intellectual property harvested by them from their own creative soil.
Is it not?So:
--Blair
So, let me get this straight. You're saying...
Is anybody else confused by this?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Please tell me where our beloved US Constitution says that corporations only exist for the public good. They are based off a notion called property rights, where people may produce using their property and conduct voluntary trade with others using their own property. The public good is not the primary reason the US Constitution was created; rather it is so the rights of the individual are protected. Musicians put their heart and soul into their music and they should be allowed to determine how they want to distribute it. (i.e. copyright - Article I Sec. 8) If they delegate this to the recording industry, that is their choice. This is just like when a programmer writes software: it is copyrighted by him/her, and he/she has the right to decide whether to use the GPL, BSD, Artistic licenses, or any other license he/she so chooses (including proprietary ones) to determine how it is to be copied.
Heh - They have bit off more than they can chew - They can go for the high Profile sites all they want, but I know of at least 50 FTP's that I can log into and d/l most any music I want. Heck, if you use CuteFTP it even has a built in MP3/File search. Besides, how is Smacking us around in America going to stop some Kid in Russia from setting up Pubbed mp3's? It's sad that our justice system is blind to the real problem - and I'm already getting nostalgic over the "good old days" just a few years ago 8-)
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Copyright did not exist in an enforceable form at all until the early 18th century--it certainly wasn't "perpetual" until the 1710 Statute. In fact, authors were usually never even paid a "pittance," but had their works freely copied by any publisher who wanted them. This is easily proven by the variety of editions of any popular writer at the time, particularly playwrites since their work was widely printed and performed with their only payment being from the acting company which originally commissioned the work. The simplest example is Shakespeare--his plays were published by disparate sources few of which ever paid him, and many of which obtained his plays not by getting access to a good prompt copy but by stationing someone in the audience to quickly jot down the lines, resulting in horribly mangled versions.
Indeed, in the preface to the First Folio, Shakespeare's friends lament that publishers treated him and his plays badly, and that that fact was a main reason for publishing the First Folio, copied from authoritative editions rather than from badly copied notes or early drafts.
The officials in charge of regulating the publishing industry at the time were only interested in censoring too-bawdy works, and in preventing unauthorized publishing of works by wealthy people with influence. The average writer had no copyright protection whatsoever.
And as for the U.S., our copyright system has absolutely nothing to do with an English statute and nothing at all to do with being for the authors. It is instituted for the purposes of advancing the useful arts and sciences, by giving writers and inventors the exclusive right to profit from their creations for a limited time, originally 14 years. In fact, the Constitution reads "Congress shall have the power . . . to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." The idea that copyright in the U.S. has anything to do with upholding a self-evident right of the author, or anything to do with his benefit, is false. The Constitution grants Congress this power for one reason alone--that it promotes the advancement of arts and sciences by giving people an incentive to create. Thus, it has to do with the advancement of the people's interests in having more literature and inventions and knowledge, and nothing to do with the author's benefit.
Otherwise, I agree with you.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
How have you been censored?
By not being able to copy the latest Britany Spears song from some guy in Vermont?
This is censorship?
Since when? you didn't create the song, you don't own the rights to the song.
It's amazing how bloody stupid people can be these days.
Nonsense!
The artists SHOULD earn money for their creations.
The music industry on the other hand, they should be eliminated since they are no longer needed in the Internet age.
If a smart geek could figure out a system to get the same amount of money tranferred directly from the consumer to the artist as today - but bypassing the record labels - that would be something.
The artists are currently not paid well.
(No, I'm not an artist)
-- From Denmark
The internet is based on standards. One of the issues that any litigious organizations will encounter is that once a standard is in use and assisting people, it is _very_ difficult to get rid of it. A standard (defactor or dejure) once proven beneficial is not something that can be recalled since there is no _owner_. So. Why not create a file-sharing standard. Create something that will easily allow the creation of a multitude of different file sharing programs that use this standard. Napster, Gnutella, Aimster, etc. etc. all could implement the standard, provide repositories etc. The ease of creating a client which utilizes the standard protocol/library/interfaces/etc. would encourage a diversity and flexibility to the file sharing "industry" which would be incredibly hard to repress. And if the standard is Open and Free and if people build Open and Free libraries on top of the standard, so much the better. (Yes, I know, TCP/IP, FTP, etc. are all protocols which could be used, but they don't really address the broader issues of searching, distributed repositories, security, etc. OTOH, I could certainly be unaware of exactly such an effort - if I am let me know!)
http://www.oomind.com/
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
You state the most common argument from the free software camp. Philosophically, I agree with you. Practically, I think we're both being naive.
For most of us, ISPs constitute choke points. Threaten enough legal action, and I can forsee filters not at every ISP, but enough to reduce P2P below the critical mass necessary to threaten the RIAA/MPAA business model. An yes, we can always come up with ways to weasel P2P around those filters and chokes. But in order to remain beyond RIAA/MPAA ability to block with lawsuit-inspired filters, etc, they probably remain beyond the average Win-user's ability to install and use. The net effect is the same.
And I can agree with you that in the long run, they will fail. I guess I don't really want them to fail, I just want them trimmed down to size. After all, in my post I did recognize their 'editorial' value. Content is not free to create, after all. Plus there is truly editorial value, in the classic sense, in filtering the quality before it goes out. (One might look at the summer movie lineup, or at TV in general, and argue that they've failed miserably at this.)
But I'd rather they be trimmed down to size in my lifetime, preferably within the next decade. After all, Rome was around for over a millennium, and the Catholic church still has quite a bit of power after longer than that. I'd rather not think the RIAA/MPAA chokepoints have that long to go.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The appearance of broadband has made a 4 MB mp3file very easy to download, so what does take time and resources to download now ?
Some Swedish computer magazines have identified the DivX media compression as a successor to the "king-of-piracy-file-format". They showed how to download, and even provided several programs on the bundled CD, such as gnutella.
I wonder if we will have a company providing .mpg and .avi exchange in the same way. Why dont they just write a more binding licence agreement and start over with a new mediatype ?
My 2 bytes
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
I think you're on to something with the penalties idea--that's really what the RIAA are good at, massaging legislators to put laws in place to protect their interests (usually at the expense of the consumer's interests).
But I don't think you'll see any "indemnity boxes" and if you do they'll be a joke. P2P is such a huge buzzword now that people forget that it is pretty much just another way of saying 'the Internet.' You don't need a fancy application for this stuff; IRC, FTP, HTTP... Gopher, even, if you wanted to resort to that... all of these are 'file-sharing' technologies and there's no way that the RIAA or anyone can tell that the packets you're swapping are copyrighted material or not. Even if you're using a detectable client, the onus is going to be on RIAA to prove that you're swapping stuff they own, not your own files. Legislation is not likely to change that--it's too firmly embedded in common law and common perception. But the penalties... you are quite right; those are a different matter.
No relation to Happy Monkey
They should sue any maker of ftp clients or servers for inevitable infrengement using their software.
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
sheldon writes:
How have you been censored?
By not being able to copy the latest Britany Spears song from some guy in Vermont?
This is censorship?
Since when? you didn't create the song, you don't own the rights to the song.
It's amazing how bloody stupid people can be these days.
Assuming that I am not a criminal and I used Napster to find unknown artists who have choosen Napster and other P2P means of distributing their music with their permission, then I have been censored by a court-induced filtering system that is so paranoid that it returns no songs for the word "dog"!
Its the equivelent of a court ordering all file servers to filter their files to prevent piracy. Searching for "windows"? You must be a pirate, since there is no free software that uses the term windows. Or how about "office"? Most people can only think of one software company that releases a program that has the word "office" in it. Thanks to the RIAA, the precedent has been set for this sort of action.
I do however have to agree with your sig. :)
their case for public good is quite a strong one: protecting the livings of musicians. I know the musicians get a unfairly small slice of the pie but thats a different issue. The fact is that if everyone could get music for free the musicians dont get any money, so they dont make music. No music != public good.
.could. be used for piracy?
Now if someone can show P2P operating with the orginators of the music getting money then this case goes away. Napster hasnt done that (saying 'oh.. err, well how about if we add subscriptions?' doesnt seem to have cut it) and thats why napster is dead.
The trouble is, the RIAA will never let such a system exist unless it's under their control. That, in a large part, is why we have yet to see a successful, profit-making online music system. Everything that has come along has been killed, crippled, or bought out by the record companies. Even Napster's subscription model could have been a success...sure, they would have lost a large portion of their user base, but they might have been able to retain enough users to make a profit and pay the artists. That's probably not the case any longer, with the droves of users who have already abandoned the almost worthless file sharing system for other P2P networks.
The only pay music networks that we're going to see will be the ones owned by the labels, and on those, the consumer is going to be paying absurd fees for music they can't burn to a CD, transfer to their Rio, or even move to another PC. And they won't even be buying this music...that would be far too unfair to the record companies. No, we only get to rent it for a short time. If we want to keep it longer, we pay more.
A point to make here is that CDRs werent banned when people started copying CDs with them. Why should it be easier to ban a non-physical medium which
There's a difference between CDRs and P2P systems...CDRs have a very obvious, proveable, legitimate use as a data storage medium. As much as the RIAA would probably like to use their legal clout to restrict CDRs, they haven't figured out a way around that legitimate use. P2P file sharing networks, on the other hand, are a new technology, and, unfortunatly, no one has really come up with a useful, widespread, 100%-legitimate use for them. There are probably many, many legitimate purposes for which P2P could be used, but we just haven't figured out what they are or how to apply P2P file sharing technology to them. Unfortunatly, with our legal system, that makes the entire P2P file sharing concept a target, because the precedent seems to be that you must prove something can be used for a "substantial legitimate purpose," or else it is automatically considered illegitimate if it could contribute in any way to something illegal.
DennyK
Yesterday the RIINS (Record Industry of Intergalactic Normal Space, a descendant of the RIAA of Earth's 20th Century) filed suit in Galactic court against GOD. While it is a well-known fact that GOD was a fictional char of the past thanks to Oolong Caloophid the RIINS believes that the very creation of the universe has been damaging its profits for near a millennia.
A spokes person for the RIINS is sums up the chain of events that leads to the damages generated by GOD.
Well, the Millennia old battle of profits driven by corporate greed continues, Full story at 11:00.
Contractual Obligation
I hate to say it, but maybe it's a good thing that online music will start out, now that these skirmishes are largely decided, in the hands of the RIAA. The reason is that, they're going to mess up big time, and the long-term benefits of them faltering may be better than the short-term benefits of easily trading music.
:-)
See, they've already been found guilty of price-fixing on CD and tape sales for the last 15 to 20 years, and although nothing has really come of that finding for the consumer, we know that the RIAA will not be able to resist charging similar prices in cyberspace to the ones they charge in meatspace. Well, what is the music industry's excuse for expensive music? "We don't own the whole process, not only are there promotional costs, but production costs for the cover art and costs of the actual press run blah blah blah blah blah." In reality the conglomerates which are the record companies own the whole process in subsidiaries, so the actual costs are next to nothing.
But on the Internet, there is no need for a press run. Costs of duplication are effectively equal to bandwidth costs, which are small relative to a meatspace CD press. And there is no need for shipping costs, no expenses for space at the retail store, etc. So when the music industry charges almost the same thing to download an album as it charges to buy the physical version, there will be a backlash. And thanks to a few enlightened ones like Orrin Hatch, Congress will get involved. I predict that in the long run the current high price structure, and lack of sufficient pay to artists, will be forcefully ironed out when the transition to cyberspace sales is made and the RIAA members try to keep charging their insanely inflated prices.
But that's just my opinion; I could be wrong. But let's hope they shoot themselves in the foot, eh?
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
It is ironic that the RIAA's web site has a headline item about "freedom of speech" and how they want to protect it.... yet, with this and similar actions, the RIAA is at the forefront of using frivolous lawsuits to censor people all over the place.
Imagine a world where ISPs, to avoid liability, install "indemnity boxes" on their connections. These detect and block P2P file transfers, are updated frequently, and can check their own integrity. By the time the average user has heard of a P2P program, the indemnity boxes block it. ISPs who do not install the box become liable for contributory copyright infringement; after one lawsuit agaunst such an ISP has been won, with ruinous damages awarded, everybody else quietly folded.
Meanwhile, P2P software has been ruled to be every bit as much a "digital crowbar" as DeCSS. You can find it, but it is deep underground.
The RIAA have the means to achieve this; they have billions of dollars to spend on winning court cases and buying legislators. The very survival of artificial scarcity as the foundation of information-age corporate capitalism depends on them winning.
Of course, if the measures prove to be ineffective, they will do what is always done: increase the penalties. Instead of blocking file-sharing software, they will switch to tracking users and making examples of them, with high-profile prosecutions. After a few pimply-faced teenagers get jail sentences for criminal conspiracy, people will be a lot more afraid to use this software. It will become a high-risk activity, much like the illegal drug trade.
their case for public good is quite a strong one:
.could. be used for piracy?
protecting the livings of musicians. I know the musicians get a unfairly small slice of the pie but thats a different issue. The fact is that if everyone could get music for free the musicians dont get any money, so they dont make music. No music != public good.
Now if someone can show P2P operating with the orginators of the music getting money then this case goes away. Napster hasnt done that (saying 'oh.. err, well how about if we add subscriptions?' doesnt seem to have cut it) and thats why napster is dead.
I think is scandelous that all P2P has been labelled 'MP3 based piracy', but lets face it, 90% of it is.
A point to make here is that CDRs werent banned when people started copying CDs with them. Why should it be easier to ban a non-physical medium which
And I hate what the record co's do in terms of commodotizing and exploiting art on the one hand, and justifying their anti-piracy on the grounds that we shouldn't be stealing from these poor, hard-working folks who are pouring out their souls to us.
But i'll go on record as saying that if there's one group of people who can solve this problem today (although not really retroactively) it's the artists themselves. They need to decide, now, that they're going to market and distribute themselves, that they don't need to be on TRL, that they don't think that garnering 13% of gross sales is fair, that while they're in it for the money, they're rock and roll stars, for god's sake, and there's lots of ways to make money that don't involve telling your fans all the things they can't do.
The house-negro-field-negro paradigm applies here quite powerfully (although, of course, I make no pretensions that ip rights as they relate to music are in the same league of injustices as black slavery in america). Artists have depended on record deals for a long time. It's what they've strived to get, it's the measure of success, and it sure would be nice to get to ride in a limousine rather than shlepping our crap around in this van. They've come to identify the music industry's interests as their own. And by keeping the supply of success low, the industry has kept demand high among those working hard out in the field.
And just as this paradigm was invoked to make people see how pathetic it was to be happy being a house-slave, although it was understandable, the best, and simplest way to make all of this argument and litigation go away is for the *artists* to stand up and walk out. They don't, cause they like cash, and who doesn't? But they're getting the table scraps, comparatively, and they thank and defend the industry in return. It's sort of sad.
There's nothing to argue over if the artists themselves realize that they've got a monopoly on whatever it is they do, and that they don't need to sell the rights to distribute in order to be heard, or in order to make money (although lots of smart people are trying to figure out the best way to do this). The record companies are being jerks, but at least they're doing it in their own interest. The artists, they're doing it because they're too lazy, stupid, and well-trained to see what a shitty situation they're in.
god is just pretend.
their case for public good is quite a strong one: protecting the livings of musicians
First, I am a musician (IAAM?). Second, this post is hogwash. Musicians don't have a "RIGHT" to make millions of dollars off their music. Good music from LOCALS is good for the public, not over priced, over engineered crap. I know many musicans that have 0 to do with the RIAA, and are NOT negatively affected by any form of piracy. Musicians will always be around for the public at clubs, on the Internet, and at festivals - without the RIAA.
Thanks to real musicians who love music as an art, the entire "music industry" could collapse and we'd still have great music for all to enjoy.
Heck, our music would probably be more cultured and less expensive to enjoy.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Just as an interesting thought; corporations are granted their charters for the "public good," right? What I wonder is who is doing the community more good, Napster (who have encouraged communication and sharing) or the RIAA (who encourage closemindness and destroy that feeling of community. As a society we need to stop abuses like this so we can takle control of our nation once more. James
I've frequently thought about how cool it would be if we could think of a "legitimate" use for the Gnutella network, so that
- an ISP can't possibly feel itself justified in shutting down anyone shoving gigabits through the Gnutella port (you've already heard about this probably...), and
- so the Government can't try to stop Gnutella (company?) from distributing Gnutella software (it wouldn't matter if it did: Gnutella's already out there and since it's P2P the government can't do anything to get gnutella company to shut down the service, but:)
- Or worse, to try to go after the users and to make it illegal to use gnutella! (Which isn't so farfetched...)
The government or RIAA can say today, "Look, there's no justification for using gnutella since it's basically only used for piracy, so anyone that's shoving data over it has every reason to be denied that right."But if we could say: "Uh, actually, it's just a distributed internet surfing system with encryption, which also happens to work as file-sharing as part of its distribution scheme, since it doesn't differentiate between html documents and binary documents, which isn't a meaningful distinction anyway since you can MIME encode anything into html if you want,"
THEN the government will be forced to say: "well hot-damn. We can't have ISPs shutting down distributed information sharing, which is the only thing WEB-SURFING can be construed as, since it would be a denial of freedom of speech (denial of right to know. Freeedom of speech, although IANAL, only is a meaningful right as long as those who want to listen to you have the right to listen to you.)
There's little the Government or any ISP could say against "It must be encrypted so that the information becomes available to users under a totalitarian regime. It must be distributed so that that regime cannot shut down a web server and cause the source of the information to cease."
The upshot: the government, your ISP, the RIAA, etc, etc, will have NO way of keeping the ENCRYPTED, DISTRIBUTED, "stuff" that you share from happening to be pirated. They can shut down Gnutella of today to some extent by making the software illegal to own, since they would be fairly justified in saying that it is used almost exclusively for illegal purposes. If you started doing web surfing over it, there is no such argument.
For this reason alone, all of us should start doing all of our surfing through this new system as soon as it's featurey enough.
Besides, at the very least, if we started doing that, then whatever we do websurf will be hidden from our ISP by being encrypted, and documents will probably come over much faster under a distributed system. Well, static documents would at least. Maybe this system would also serve to route you around faster, mimicking IPV6, so we could still do better to use it than surf straight. There's no limit to how much good we could get from doing all of our surfing through a distributed, encrypted system, and since the fact that it would make piracy easy is an inherent but small side-effect, it would mean that no one could stop it.
Long Live the Freeedom to Rip Artists Off!
(Which I happen to disagree with, but to a far less extent than I do with the RIAA's trying to force us not to share our files. If artists included an address to send money to in the extended descriptions fields of their MP3's [yes, artists should distribute their own mp3s], I know that I for one would take advantage of it and give them their due. As it is, it's far too much trouble and far too much of what I would pay would go straight to the record industry's pocket. That reminds me of a joke, which is actually a good analogy for why we share name-brand artists instead of no-name artists, even though name-brand artists are being whored out by the record industry.)
~
While I beleive your references are sound, I don't think your conclusions about the inevitable outcome of the fight are.
First of all, those who are currently 'beat down', Napster, Scour, MP3.com, etc... were stupid. They were trying to make money off of an already existing artificially scarce resource.
What the 'Second Generation' P2P models all strive for is freedom of information duplication and transmission, even over control. Take Gnutella, for example. Everyone in my office used Napster, once upon a time. Those that were too lazy to setup Napigator once Napster started filtering now use Bearshare, which uses Gnutella protocol. I'm using it right now. Gnutella use is skyrocketing, according to the Salon Article, and I beleive it.
The *only* way for the record industry to get rid of Gnutella is to somehow make it illegal, as the MPAA has tried to do with DeCSS with very little success.
Layer all the other 'free' P2P clients such as Freenet and CDC's new project on top of that. It can't be stopped.
Look at Usenet. Gigabytes and gigabytes of the most illegal information ever in the form of Warez, pirate MP3's, porn, bomb-making instructions, etc... pass through the alt hierarchy on a daily basis. Newsfeeds has a NNTP servers dedicated to both MP3 downloads and Warez downloads, yet you don't see anyone trying to shut them down.
The 'publishers', the RIAA, the MPAA, and all the existing book publishers are fighting a rear-guard retreat. Sure, they have more money, more influence, and can crush any one person into fine paste, but what they don't realize is that they're not fighting individuals or even other companies. They're fighting progress.
The Roman Empire tried to do it. Look where they are now. The Catholic Church tried to do it, and even succeeded for many centuries, but were eventually beaten down by the invention of the printing press. The nation-states of Europe tried to do it, when they colonized the rest of the world. Now the information industries of America are trying to do it.
Just like their predecessors, they *will* fail. You can't fight time.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
US, Everywhere - The RIAA has sued the Department of Defence for creating ARPANET, the mother of the Internet, on the basis that it facilitates "copying of mp3 files via HTTP, FTP, EMAIL" and a host of other evil tools that exist merely for the facilitation of piracy. Al Gore was also named in the suite.
Upon learning that the case was summarily dismissed, the RIAA sued the messenger who delivered the news.
This article is pure bunk. I've lost track of how many file sharing programs I've seen announced in recent months. The internet is a system designed to share information. The only way to prevent information (like mp3s) from being shared is to shut down the entire net.
It was pretty apparent to me that the big names in early file sharing (Napster, MP3.com etc) would go down. They had pretty, bright red targets painted on their foreheads.
However, now that it is started there will be no stopping it. You can filter for music and people will just encrypt it before sending. You can shut down central servers and people will go peer to peer. You can publish FUD about the death of music sharing and people will ridicule you.
Bah, just go to freenet.
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
I'll refer to two pieces of science fiction, as harbingers of the future war of which we're seeing the first battles.
For the first, I forget the title. But it was about an unspecified era in which aliens try to 'help' us by giving us replicators. First there are attempts to control access to the replicators. But of course, someone manages to replicate the replicator, and it's all out of the bag. Along the way, someone speculates that the aliens were really out to ruin us by destroying our economy, which is based on scarcity. Finally, the 'hero' of the story realizes that by controlling the originals, he can still be rich. Economy of scarcity is maintained, only at the 'manuscript' level.
In Joe Haldeman's "The Forever Peace", the United States invents the NanoForge, essentially a nanotech-based replicator. Then they nuke the lab that the prototype was in, telling the world that the NanoForge exploded, so it's established as *physically dangerous* technology. (It's really not physically dangerous, just politically and economically.) Thereafter, some dozen NanoForges are government-run at high cost, with some public access, because they're just too dangerous any other way. Once again, economy of scarcity is maintained.
This is it. The Internet enables an economy of abundance based on exchange of information. Bits are bits, and from a technological perspective, they can be copied for near-zero cost. But information exchange is not a new business. Prior to Internet and electronic exchange, it was done on dead trees and discs. (First laquer, then vinyl, then CDs.)
The publishing industries arose in order to disseminate information. They made their livlihood doing so, and grew into empires. Ironically, they are now threatened by more efficient means of dissemination, and are fighting for their continued existence by *restricting* those newer means.
From another perspective, there are (at least) two aspects of publication, be it music, movies, or print, editorial and duplication. While the editorial aspect is still necessary and valuable, the duplication is becoming obsolete. Yet in common perception, the editorial value has faded and the duplication dominates. So someone downloads music, and wonders what value the record company contributes.
We were headed toward a world with wide, free spread of information. It had some problems, in that it didn't recognize the editorial value of the current publishing industries. Now, as a result of RIAA and MPAA actions, we are headed toward Joe Haldeman's world, where a potential economy of abundance is being thrown away, in favor of information and access control. I don't like this at all.
But *they* have more money, and more influence in the courts and congress than *we* do. We can fight the good fight it's a sad reflection on "Justice" in the USA that I expect us to get beaten down every step of the way. Rather cynical for a Friday, I know.
The philosophical war began in music and movies, and is moving to the print world. There are signs that it would like to move into software, though we have a good, strong beachhead here. I wonder where else it will try to go.
To be more positive, we first need to recognize the *editorial* value of the publishing industries. The bar for publishing on the web is low, and there are a lot of clunkers out there as a result. We need some way other than a few portals and hit-based Google searches to recognize good content. If we want to take the battle for music and movies to a different front, we need to grow the alternative - free (or at least non-RIAA/MPAA) content. We need to make it known where it is, and how to sort the wheat from the chaff.
Even after the first few battles, most of us don't recognize the breadth of the War. This is a wholesale societal change for the better that we're letting slip out of our grasp.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
OPERATEUR: ecran principal s'allument.
M. LE CAPTAIN: C'est vous!!!
MICHAEL: Comment allez-vous messieurs.
MICHAEL: Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
M. LE CAPTAIN: Quoi vous dites!?
MICHAEL: Vous etes dans le chemin à la destruction.
MICHAEL: Vous avez pas du chance pour survivre faites votre temps.
MICHAEL: Ah-hau hau hau hau.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions