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MP3.com Sued for 'viral' Copyright Infringement?
Are We Afraid writes "Apparently the RIAA isn't the only one looking to make money off of MP3.com. They have just been sued by a group of independent artists for, get this, "viral copyright infringement". What does that even mean???" They claim that people who downloaded MP3s from mp3.com contributed them to napster, so MP3.com owes them. It's really bizarre.
This is what I like to call "kicking your fellow man" ... why are they not going after Napster which is where the MP3s are being shown? It is not MP3.COM's fault that the end-user shared (sometimes inadvertantly) the MP3 with Napster. I am sick of the RIAA, sick of MP3.com and most of all, I am sick of Napster. Why can't we all just get along?
Anyone with half a brain should comprehend that if you release you music on one site, you can expect it to be posted to some other site.
I guess they should have used SDMI or something, oh wait, that wouldn't work either.
room101 -- how much can you stand before they break you?
(they always break you eventually)
If people cannot sue gun companies for what people do with guns, then I sincerely believe this lawsuit will be fighting an uphill battle trying to sue mp3.com for what other people did with their downloaded files.
This is like laws that permit gun shops to be sued for selling weapons later used in crimes. Silly. Damn silly. Thank you, DMCA. You've opened up the Bottle of Stupidity and let the genie loose. It's now becoming quite apparent that the only way around this is to scrap every copyright law and develop a new set for today's methods of content distribution.
If using Linux is about choice, how come people complain when I choose to use Windows?
I'm an independent musician on mp3.com, and I want people to download my music and spread it on Napster (well I did, until Napster started to suck. OK, WinMx then.) It's all about exposure. Nobody will hear my music on the radio, mp3.com and Napster et al are my best venues to advertise.
MP3.com made compressed copies of about 900,000 songs, which it placed on its computer servers -- without obtaining the rights to do so.
I wish they gave more details, this makes no sense. mp3.com makes you click-sign an agreement saying that this is all OK.
Back in the glory days, I made a purchase at cheap-cds.com, and the CDs I bought were AUTOMATICALLY made available on my mp3.com account! Unfortunately, I only listened to them about 3 times each at work before mp3.com locked everything up in response to the Universal complaint.
Think about it: mp3.com was everything Napster claimed to be. "I have the right to space shift! I have the right to backup!" Well, mp3.com actually allowed for just those things, with (and admittedly cursory) verification that you actually owned the CD you were listening to. All arranged in neat lists, with high-quality mp3s and decent bandwidth. If, for example, cdnow had the option to charge an extra 50 cents or buck per CD to enable functionality like that, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
A much bigger concern with mp3.com, it seems, and one that's widely ignored, is the way they screw over their own independent artists. They take a big share and charge huge fees for services like "payback for playback," and you have to sign away all kinds of rights to put your stuff up there. But all this about "contributory infringement" (I can only assume that's what they meant by "viral"?) is hogwash. Bring back my online music locker!
Of course, there'll be no money to win from MP3.com's corpse.
"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life." -- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_, Book 9, 37
This should be interesting.....it'll all boil down to who the judge is and who cluefull/less he is.
Lets recap: the service that mp3.com offered required you to prove that you had the CD. They used their special little app that would then be queried by their servers for a number of random pieces from the CD. If all the pieces lined up, then you 'owned' the CD, and they put it in your locker for you. Even Bruce Scheiner (sic? i can't be bothered to look it up) evaluated their protocol and found it cryptographically secure.
So - You can only get access to the mp3's from mp3.com if you already own (or are at least IN POSESSION of) the CD. Therefore you could rip the mp3's for napster yourself. Getting a streamed version from them gave you nothing - except slowing you down.
But with the typical justice system they'll get reamed........ again..........
It's sad to read that this lawsuit is being filed by a representation of over 50 independent artists and labels. Why aren't they fighting the real battle? mp3.com, while not perfect, has paved the path for independent artists to find success on the internet without signing with a large, corrupt record label.
If these artists found their work being passed around Napster, they should be happy, not angry. I bet more people have now heard their names and maybe even some bought an album or went to a live show. If not, well they're probably not very good.
The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we're uncool. -Crowe
How can they truly demonstrate the MP3.com is responsible for putting these songs up on Napster? Granted, if they did create this "bootleg library" then they're liable for the infringement there, but how can the songs there be linked to the ones that are proliferating "virally"?
I get the feeling that this one will have MP3.com paying a hefty fine over the library they created, but hopefully they can fight off this viral thing, which is pretty absurd. Even if they distributed the songs to people illegally, they didn't force anyone to throw them on Napster, if those versions on Napster even came from them in the first place.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
While we're at it, why doesn't somebody sue MCI Worldcom, Sprint, and any other backbone provider for upkeeping the Internet which allows file sharing to occur in the first place?
This kind of litigation is ridiculous. It's merely an attempt to bleed more money out a dying company, and any judge with half a brain would realize the absolute dangerous precedence this would set. Anyone who merely touches a certain technology could be sued if the tech was used for copyright infraction. "Oh, those CDR manufacturers should be sued, since they're making discs that carry pirated material. They're accessories to infringement."
Once again, I say puuhleeeze. This whole attack on "piracy" is doing nothing but making the recording industry look bad. It pushes people to find better ways to circumvent the process and causes others to completely boycott legitimate music purchases all together.
Industry, find someway to make the customer happy without ramming lawsuits and unethical CD mods down our throats. Customers, support reasonable attempts at legitimate digital music, but let your voice be heard when abuse of the law and standards occurs. Until then, a lot of good people will lose out.
Electronic Frontier Foundation for online civil rights information
If cities can sue handgun makers for the costs associated with innercity crime, I suppose this is a valid suit. I'm still waiting for them to sue kitchen knife makers, then charity hospitals for makeing bad people. It's obvious that those people have no other use than murder and mayhem and the cost to us is astounding. Give me all your money. Barf.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It's because they released some mp3's under the GPL.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
I know! Lets all sue the media for viral dissemination of sites know to distrubute MP3's of artists music. Since it is quite obivous that if the media had not spent so much time publicizing mp3.com and napster, then less people would hear about it less "damages" of course would have been done
Since 2600.com is being sued over linking to DeCSS, this tactic is not unexpected. After a few appeals court rules against this sort of non-snese, things may settle down.
Fight Spammers!
I'm a copyright infringment virus. Run me and I'll send copies of all your MP3's to everyone in your address book.
This is my theory. It is mine, and it goes like this: the brontosaurus is small at the front...
It sucks that entites like the RIAA and now this class-action lunacy always go after the so-called "enablers". The fact is that the law-suits themselves would not be lucrative if they went after actual bone-fide music pirates (god I hate that word). The fscked up part is that when they stop one "enabler" a dozen others pop up in place.
The only way to stop this madness is for the record companies to make a harsh example of anyone they catch pirating music. This would (at least partially) dissuade music pirates from continuing to trade files. I think the reason we don't see this kind of action is that it is not lucrative for the lawyers involved. In order to make a law suit viable, they must: a) target a single entity instead of an unidentifiable group, and b) that target must have lots of money to fork over in a settlement.
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
so, does this make any mp3 generating software liable for "viral" infringment? abcde is about as viras as Madona's pap smear. how about more comercial offerings? how about my trusty tape recorder?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I really don't like this trend of everyone and their dog suing MP3.com. I, and many of my friends, depend on MP3.com as a means of distribution for our music. I've also found it a wonderful place to find new music. I don't even go into record stores any more, simply because I appreciate being able to listen to the music I want to buy before I buy it. Even if people just click and download songs to try them out, we get paid.
I'm not going to be rich because of it, but for at least one friend of mine's band (The Brobdingnagian Bards: http://mp3.com/thebards), it's a really good step on the way to being able to make music for a living.
For all its flaws, it's a great service both to music fans and to musicians. I hope that a few bad apples won't ruin it for the rest of us.
Bzzzt. Wrong! If your wish comes true, these hapless artists will set a precedent for the legal validity of "viral criminal activity" claims.
How will you feel when the lawyers come after you, simply because you committed a lawful act that allowed someone else to commit a lawful act that in turn allowed someone else to commit an unlawful act?
You better hope that cowering under the covers in your bedroom doesn't enable one of your employer's subsidiary's employees to embezzle from the company!
"But the artists were robbed!" you say. "They deserve to get some money back!" Sure thing, pal. It doesn't justify them beating it out of me with a stick, though. Let them sue Napster, or some other actual "criminal". Getting robbed is no excuse for breaking the system. Unless they're anarchists, of course - in which case, they probably shouldn't have been sucking up to MP3.com in the first place. Posers.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
At least they aren't suing:
* Intel/AMD for providing chips that enable computers to function. Thus making Internet piracy possible.
* U Illinois for creating a means of accessing web sites where said info can be traded (watch out Berners-Lee!)
* The US government for funding the creation of the internet, which has enabled piracy to run rampant.
* My parents. For obviously not teaching me right from wrong.
I'm so sick of law suits I can't even tell if I was kidding....
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
Why? Because I was playing some MP3's that I downloaded from Napster in my car with the windows rolled down as I was driving down the street = unauthorized public performance. Honda should be ashamed. of themselves for robbing hard working artists this way.
RIAA will soon insist that car manufactures locked windows in the upright positions when music is being played unless it comes from a royalty-paying souce.
On a side note...this is why you NEVER EVER settle a case out of court. MP3.Com settled and has been taking up the ass ever since (insert obligatory goatse reference). The newest game in the music industry is to flaggelate the expired equinine. Napster is still fighting. And really, if they do lose, could they possibly any worse off than MP3.Com?
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
You want the answer? Neil Stephenson knows. The only thing to be gained from such a lawsuit is a majority share (read: control) of the company. MP3.com screwed up, and now a consortium of independent artists are going to step up and try to do it better. This makes perfect sense. The RIAA is going to end up owning Napster, so the Indies need a way into the market, too.
main(){char I,l,O[]={'-',1-1,0,(1<<5)-1,0+'-',-10-1,-10,11-0,
MP3.com purchased all of the CDs containing those 900,000 songs. Why shouldn't they have right to compress them and put then in a database (that is what they were sued for in the inital lawsuit, not distributing the music afterwards)? That seems like fair use to me (but not judge Rakoff, I guess). Once you pay for the music, why shouldn't you be able to shift it to another format so that you can use it more easily? Forget for a second about what they wanted to use it for - they got in trouble for the shifting, not for the intended use. The previous ruling would indicate that the shifting would have gotten them in trouble regardless of the intended use.
That created a vast bootleg library, from which MP3.com subscribers could download songs.
What they fail to mention is that users were only allowed to download songs on CDs that they owned. You had to run MP3.com's "beam-it" software on your PC and insert each CD that you wanted to be able to use with their service before you could download any music from that CD. Nothing here was "bootlegged".
The judge in the previous case ruled that the service was not legal, but I still think it should be. Everybody involved had paid for a copy of the music that they came in contact with and my.mp3.com only served to increase the value of owning a CD (I used it all the time because I could listen to my 150+ CDs from anywhere and it encouraged me to buy more CDs).
-----
Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
Think about it.
You must guarantee that, of all the people you encounter in a day, you do not kill, assault, steal from, or kill 100% of them. You must also guarantee that of everything you say, 100% of it is neither slander nor libel, nor someone else's work.
If you are a previous offender of any of these instances, the government assumes that you *can't* assume this by yourself, and you need to convince them that you can to get them off yoru back
What they should do is sue the record companies. The record companies sold the cds to the people, who then ripped the cds, and put the resulting mp3s on napster. After they sue the record companies, they should sue that Fraunhofer guy. Ooh! And they should sue God for allowing all this insanity to occur.
Following that logic, shouldn't they be able to also sue the recording industry for releasing their songs on media that allowed, in effect, the same thing (i.e. redistribution via Napster)?
Or maybe the artists should sue themselves for choosing to have their music released on such a format. Or, for even creating the music in the first place!
This "viral" concept is limitless, and I'm sure will be laughed out of court. Then again, with the way tech-related legal cases have gone lately...
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
...especially when you compare the percentage of money and rights they give to their artists to what the RIAA typically gives its artists.
;)
And for a lot of us, it's a great way to supplement our income from gigs and real album sales.
The $19.95 "Premium Artist" service done right is actually ludicrously easy to break even with. I have yet to have a month where I even came close to going negative, and my only form of advertising is a link at the bottom of my slashdot sig!
Also, just because you put songs up on MP3.com doesn't mean you have to put ALL of them up there. In fact, not doing so is a great way to draw listeners into buying your CD's and attending your gigs.
So I don't think MP3.com is ripping me or anyone else off. I think the people who complain about such things are the people who tend to complain about everything -- the ultra-paranoid who think EVERYONE is out to rip them off.
Or agents of the RIAA. (hehehe...just kidding)
1. The make you put the cd in your computer before you could listen to the songs
2. You could only 'stream' the music files once they were on your list.
granted, someone did come out with software to capture the streams, but then those files would have to be renamed and tagged. In reality, it's the cd rippers that that contibuted to napster files.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
Woohoo! Now the RIAA can sue the backstreet boys for producing the music that can be put on napster!
The anti-salmon
You can only get access to the mp3's from mp3.com if you already own (or are at least IN POSESSION of) the CD.
You pointed out a subtle distinction: possession != owning. Yes, the cliche goes "possession counts as nine-tenths of the law," but the other one-tenth comes from contracts. For example, I often borrow CDs from a public library, but they come with a contract that I must return them after 21 days or pay late fees. I certainly do not own them under first sale and most likely may not keep backups in my possession.
Will I retire or break 10K?
No one asked me to sign, verbally agree to or otherwise enter into a legal obligation with anyone the lasst time i plunked down 20 bucks for a cd. Librarys are a different story.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
The only reason that the RIAA is so arrogant is they they have power. Their power, however, comes from us, i.e., from the money they make when we, the public buy their products. They use this power to lord it over us and help enact their fascist laws.
There is only one way to cut them to size and reclaim our liberties. We must hit them where it hurts the most, their pocket book. We must refuse to buy their products. Download it all and copy it all! Then make copies for your friends and neighbors. Let's see them put an entire population in jail.
MP3.com was ruled to be liable for #1 and #2. Now it's time for #3.
Outside of being just plain bizarre, mp3.com could use a few legal tricks. For example, they could say the full set of mp3.com users is completely disjoint from the full set of napster users (meaning if someone is a mp3.com user, they're not a napster user and vice versa).
Failing that, they could point out that because you have to own a CD before you can download the corresponding mp3s from mp3.com, why would a someone who uses Napster even bother to buy the CD just to get the mp3 from mp3.com, when all along they could just get the mp3 from Napster, regardless of whether they own the CD.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
This is a common legal strategy. It's no different that it's a .com that's being sued (because it really isn't. It's Vivendi Universal). The won't set any prescident here because Vivendi Universal's team of flesh-eating lawyers will chew them up and spit them out. This won't be setteled. It will go to court, and it will get thrown out.
You can't blame the artists. They're just doing what their lawyers advised them to do and sueing the nearest deep pocket they can find; after all, what kind of settlement could they get from Napster. It's already been bled dry in legal fees (almost).
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
MP3.COM IS VIVENDI.
Did you not notice when they were bought out? Have you not read the contract/artist agreement mp3.com artists are required to agree to that gives Vivendi PERMANENT RIGHTS over the artist's music even after you leave? Did you not notice that they are leaving it open for mp3.com to insert promotional materials INTO that music via language that gives them carte blanche to edit and alter what you give 'em?
mp3.com IS the stranglehold of a major label. Vivendi. Read the contract- better yet, run it by an entertainment lawyer if you don't believe me. mp3.com DESERVES to be destroyed to keep people like you from mistakenly touting it as some kind of independent resource when it is now a wholly owned part of Vivendi and YOU PAY THEM to participate in the 'royalty' like programs they have- which, I might add, are arbitrary and obscure, meaning that they are free to simply never pay you!
Go ahead, people, sue mp3.com! You're really just suing Vivendi- which probably doesn't care whether mp3.com lives or dies. Buying out mp3.com was a purely strategic move, and now Vivendi artists top the charts at mp3.com, with indie acts actually kicked off the service and their 'money' withheld through trumped-up charges if they have the nerve to chart higher than the Vivendi acts... do some googling for 'Analog Pussy mp3 vivendi artist activity', see for yourself.
mp3.com are NOT YOUR FRIEND.
While we're at it, let's go after the car companies. After all, there's no way they can deny that every drunk driver needs to have a car to drive while intoxicated. I think it's a reasonable assumption that Ford knows the drunks need vehicles.
314-15-9265
they are different independent artists. The people sueing didn't post their music on mp3.com. It got put up by mp3.com.
There is a lot of confusion about this, but even when you figure it all out the lawsuit is still incredibly stupid.
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
``The complaint is hopelessly redundant, argumentative and has much irrelevancy and inflammatory material.''
sulli
RTFJ.
So if I listen your music like nonstop for a month, do you make uber-amounts of cash?
So really the question is: What would make you more money?
One guy-> A hundred streams
OR
10 guys-> 10 streams each?
Record companies provide music via the popular CD format. These digitally encoded music files can easily be 'ripped' to a computer hard drive, facilitating the illegal sharing of copyrighted materials across computer networks.
Of course, CDs were widespread long before internet access, and most judges probably own a CD player, and are thus familiar with the format. But most judges (and politicians) have shown themselves to be clueless about the internet. And most have probably never played an MP3.
So we have law suits like this.
Steve M
The artist agreement provides that mp3.com keeps rights to anything you give them, _permanently_, and can also be changed at any point without your awareness or consent. It's up to you to constantly monitor the language of the agreement, because for every little (or big) change, you have something like seven days to read it, understand it, stay or bail. Of course, if you bail, they still keep your material...
Really, CD's get their music ripped into MP3 format all the time... the recording companies should sue the music stores too.
BlackNova Traders
That they are trying to prove that MP3.com is responsible for the actions of their users when their users are not using their service ?
Does this mean mcdonalds can get sued if i eat burger king and get sick as i normally eat mcd's ?
It seems to me that once the user has verified their right to download from MP3.com (their security as has already been said, appears unbreakable) then Mp3.com hands over any legal responsobility for copyright violation to the user - which of course poses a problem to the companies as you cant sue everyone (as much as the RIAA would like too)
I havent seen one artist named yet and i wonder how much of this is one clever lawyer getting artists to buy into this suit on a basis of 'i might get you some money' ? would be interesting to find out if he is getting paud upfront or working on a percentage of money he can get ?
Also wouldnt an independant artist want as much exposure as they can get ? you would think napster would be good news for the struggling guys, you know word of mouth etc etc.
The problme is that the music industry has been hijacked by the likes of Copyright.net who go out and actively seek out violation (how many people actually download Roy Orbison MP3's anyway ? he's been dead over 10 years - wouldnt eminem have more of a problem) which sounds to me like a desperate attempt to screw every last cent out of their copyright property - most of the artists theyt seem to represent are dead or unknown.
Check out their site at www.copyright.net - is it a coincidence that after being involved in lawsuits against P2P services they have one of their own (PeerGenius) - seems to me like someone is making a lot of money off of this issue (and it isnt Mp3.com !)
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
Anyone who links to software which allows you to copy music files is breaking the law.
Anyone who wrote software that allows you to copy music in another country where its legal is also breaking the law
This discussion is probably illegal because it mentions copying music
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
I think that's a brilliant (though devious) idea. Everyone has mp3 files, as opposed to PowerPoint files (10's of Mb) or whatever. But then, why send MP3's when you can send random .jpg's from their hard drive? True, the bandwidth would be less but the damage would be much greater. I bet at least a dozen rich and important people would have to retreat from public life because of what was revealed...
Freedom: "I won't!"
I would like to sue the RIAA, the MPAA, the owners of the website Copyright.net, the writers of and voters for the DMCA, as well as the 52 "independent songwriters and music publishers" for "viral" stupidity.
Each of these groups in their own special ways have contributed to the widely-assumed fallacy that all of their efforts are to protect the world from eye-patched, peg-legged, rum-swilling pirates (let's face it, the masses think of visions of Blackbeard at a keyboard when the term piracy is used in conjunction with computers).
Instead, the RIAA sued to become the only legal group to be allowed to steal vast sums of money from musicians. Microsoft only dreams of such power. The MPAA sued to make sure that they weren't forced to expand their potential DVD market to include Linux users (after all, VHS killed the movie theaters so they need to keep on top of these things). Copyright.net's suit will be charged to their advertising budget. The DMCA suits are to make sure that the horrible IBM cloning nightmare never happens again (boy did THAT hurt the industry!). And those independent songwriters and music publishers sued to make sure that they had a plan to fall back on in case the rest of the world never realizes how truly brilliant their musical indeavors are.
For obvious reasons I'm claiming a massive amount of damage has been done to what was left of my beliefs that the justice system works, instead of the justice system "Will Work For Bribe Money". They have taken a corporation-sized DUMP on my First Amendment Rights as a US citizen, and used the laws of foreign countries to wipe their asses as they prosecute individuals from around the world for letting their Tools of Mass Copyright Infringement to flow through THEIR (big business') Internet.
I am seeking their collective disbandment as my compensatory damages to make sure they don't ever attempt shit like this again, and for punitive damages I want their leaders' gene pool drained. It may not keep these things from happening again, but it sure goes a long way towards that dream.
Signed,
John Q. Citizen
It could be argued (and successfully i think) that Napster and services like this have actually contributed to the sales of albums and development of artists.
As evidence look at Eminem - due to his lyrical content the amount of airplay he could and did get was limited - Top40 tends to stay as far away from controversial subjects as possible - yet the eminem album Marshall Mathers quickly rose to be a best seller ? why ?
I posit that the availabilty of the tracks on napster and other file sharing systems help break him as an artist and build his popularity - look at the demographics or his audience - they range mainly in the 14-25 group - co-incidentally the major user base for napster users - the songs were readily available on naspter befoe the artist made it big and were heavily downloaded (based on the huge number of hits a search on his name would return).
Without napster would this artist have had the worldwide success he has ? His lyrics contain mysonginist, racist and viloent overtones so redio play would have been limited in many countries (in Aust it is very very limited except for Stan) who have less liberal views, yet his albums sell, the marketing for the artist started after he became popular - after people were downloading his songs.
And this is not isolated - How many people would have heard of bands like Sigur Ros if it werent for napster, how much success worldwide would 2nd teir artists like Lil Romeo have ? Groove Armada ? etc etc.
Face it RIAA - MP3 has helped you sell albums - it can i think be succesfully argued that in the range of artists on the market, the number of record companies etc that the music industry is at it's most buoyant point in the last 50 years ?
And where would these independant labels be without Napster, MP3.com etc - by being able to get outside the record company dominated retail chains they have been able to cut sosts and use 'viral' marketing to build artist presence and sales.
Something stinks here i suspect - does the term biting the hand that feeds you mean anything to these guys ?
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
By releasing any music at all, they're just opening the opportunity for pirates, thus is the root of all copyright infringements.
From now on, I will not listen to rock music on the radio. I have not bought a CD, or downloaded an mp3 the last year or so. From now on, only live performances, or talk radio will benefit from my listening.
Since I hardly ever go to concerts, that means the guys who play on street corners and the subway will receive $.25 or so every time they play something I find worthy of listening to.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
A lie and a logical fallacy do not make a rational arguement. Please do try again, though.
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
They should also sue the ISP, the phone company, and the manufacturers of the dial up modem or cable modem/dsl equipment.
Be sure to sue the people with money. It's a waste of your money to sue poor people.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
Sorry- you are wrong :)