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RIAA Looks To Stop KaZaA, Morpheus & Grokster
John Hampton writes: "The RIAA is going to try to sue KaZaZ, Morpheus and Grokster, according to this story. Internal memos from within the RIAA outline the record label's findings and strategy going ahead. Great story. Hilary Rosen begging executives to talk about the issue and the RIAA issuing the lamest statement ever. From DotcomScoop.com."
The artical says that Grokster, one of the P2P that might be sued by the RIAA, is based in the carribien iland of Nevis (or something like this). Offhand I would say that its based there primarly to avoid law suits of this nature. Any one have any info on how Grokster could be sued if they are not under U.S law?
Oh yah, FP
Sleep is for the weak!
If find it very hard to believe that this organization was allowed to exist. It functions autonomously using other people's money, but claims to do everything "on other's behalves."
SIG: HUP
The music/movie industry has a problem, their products are easily copied. You all know that drill. And how do they react? Slamming laws on us. "yeah, fuck the man!", is probably a reaction from a bunch of you, but ripping other off isn't cool. It's a new form of mass accepted theft.
The software industry has survived despite the warez scene, though I must confess that I don't think we can draw as many parallells here. There are a lot of software that is not made for the general public, and then the software in itself could even be useless without the connection to the company which makes it, or it wouldn't even have been made unless it was ordered.
So what is the point of my rant? Well, the industry can either go on and be a royal pain in the ass and hated by soon everyone, or they can start thinking about their existence. This is what happened to people with the industrial revolution, and now it's reversed itself as large companies are on the loosing end instead. If they want to survive, they should find new markets, and they will prevail. There are brand new markets out there just ready to be exploited!
//John
Kazaa/Morpheus/Grokster JUST broke functionality with giFT by causing the client to HAVE to contact a main server before it will participate in the network. This move makes this new network easily vulnerable to a shutdown since it relies on a few entry points. If they had left it alone the floating network would continue to float, but not now. Oh well.
Why did they think they could get away with it anyway after Napster? I can only guess it's because they're distributing the code but not the server.
But that's not really the case as I understand it because Kazaa, for example, connects to kazaa.com to get a list of supernodes when you start the program, so it's just like Napster connecting to it's own servers to get a list.
"I know you want your new businesses to be successful. So do I. Given the overwhelming volume of these alternative services, RIAA can't handle all of the enforcement alone. If they are not controlled more effectively and consumers redirected to legitimate offerings, there won't be new businesses. That's obvious," Rosen continued.
What the RIAA and other big industry orgs fail to understand is that it's not about directing users to "legitimate offerings", it's about not being a dinosaur in a fast paced industry. They are struggling to maintain old ways of distributing music and they don't understand that they have been replaced by a new distribution model. The record industry used to exist because some band, say "Vibrating Sandbox", didn't have the resources to publish and distribute nationally. Duh. Today, ANYBODY can send their music around the world.
I find it so amusing that the RIAA claims it hopes for the success of other music related businesses, then talks about handing enforcement. Enforcement!? RIAA: You are a conduit for music, not the source! Enforcement is up to the artists. If "Vibrating Sandbox" doesn't want its music distributed on *ster, then that's their problem.
The thing with organizations like the RIAA and the MPAA is they don't know when to quit. They need to learn a new way to make money that works with the modern world, or just go away all together.
Of course, not to mention that these "illegitimate" file/music sharing services actually give listeners access to a wide variety of flavors. Try finding the same obscure, yet decent material on an RIAA services as you would find on Napster. It's a shame how something so big, greedy, and ancient can have so much control over the methods of medium they contributed absolutely nothing to.
Why bother.
Let's take a quote from the giFT page:
Can you say "Ooops?"
Free Mac Mini
Filetrading will return to something like BBS only online and via TCP/IP.
I predict people will end up using BBS software over ssh and downloading using zmodem. (as some ppl are doing already)
I'd like to see the RIAA have ssh banned.
The sooner these goons realise that they cannot stop whats happening the better for them and for everyone else. Their business model is obsolete because copyright has outlived its usefulness to society in many areas.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
In a way, they're acting no different from the record companies in trying to stop an alternate method of distribution (of sorts).
It's ironic (did I use the word correctly?) that this protective action has openned them up to lawsuits from the record industry.
"Significantly, the FastTrack system encrypts all communications"
They then go on to discuss the packet communications and types.
Doesn't the DCMA prohibit them from doing playing with encrypted packages and attempting to decrypt them to see what's happening? Or don't I understand the law correctly?
The problem is the general trend. Each lawsuit that the RIAA wins strengthens their future lawsuits because they now have case history. I don't know if you read the articles, but when they pointed out the legal misdoings of KaZaA, the legal arguments they cited were all taken from the Napster case.
When KazaA is taken down, there will be even more legal precedence to take these networks down. Strictly speaking, the ability to share files is not and should not be illegal. The users who share copyrighted files are the ones breaking the law.
Rather than trying to screw us out of our fair use rights (backups, ripping, etc), the RIAA and related companies should work on hitting the individual users guilty of infringment. Once a bunch of people get fined for stealing, it won't be so prevalent.
Instead, they are trying to take out the technology that makes stealing possible. This may work in the long run, but does nothing to help the end user. If you think all of your customers are theives, then you should probably be in another business.
Captain_Frisk
From the RIAA lawyers' memo on FuckedCompany:
The FastTrack network designates (perhaps automatically) certain peers - more powerful computers with high-bandwidth connections - as "supernodes." [because of the system's encrypted communication, we are unable to determine how supernodes are designated].
I would love to see them suddenly understand how the supernodes work and the FastTrack developers sue for an incredible amount. It would be nice to see Slashdot's favorite law get used to help the little guy once.
Since filesharing networks like KaZaA are technically illegal in most respects, I hardly think this is surprising.
If I claimed that the internet was technically illegal because you could use it to distribute copyrighted music or child porn, you'd think I was an idiot.
And yet you've bought in completely to the "sending files from one computer to another is morally wrong" claim, just under a different name. And all of the implicit assumptions that could justify that claim, "A tool is evil if it can be used to do evil things", "The RIAA owns everything that can be encoded as a sound file", did they manage to convince you of those too?
A pro bono class action by a first rate lawyer would set a lovely precedent. As for international torts, I'd say deal with them on a case by case instance. For the most part, the problem is US-centric.
It would really depend on what was important in my life. Personally, and I can say this because I'm not in the said predicament of choosing this, I would want my artistic work to be free for everyone to experience, but I wouldn't want or expect to make a living off of it. That's a personal perspective, but a rational one.
The number of artists that could be employed in the industries is phenominal, but they aren't because the markets have been saturated with megalabels and uberdraconian principles of selection that prohibit any entry. It's an arisocracy now anyway, and 99.9% of artists are dropped by the wayside and barely scrape a living. Getting rid of the megalabels would certainly create more demand for smaller bands, and maybe bring the success rate for lesser known artists up to 99.8%, which is a difference of millions of people.
To give an economical perspective, a concert band or symphony orchestra employs up to 120 people (iirc, London Symphony Orchetsra), rarely if ever releases CD's, has huge overhead in musical instruments, and still turns a profit in the majority of large cities. Surely God a band of 4 people with mass produced musical equipment can fabricate a decent profit from live concerts.
While you're laughing at the idiocy of the RIAA, does it occur that they're chuckling away to themselves as well? They're not losing money right now, and they see a way to make even more money in the future by demonstrating that we're all thieves.
They don't have to win these suits. Actually, they want to lose them (in court, or de facto as the users switch to a new service) as this just demonstrates how ineffectual individual litigation is. Then they just buy more laws that effect everyone. We will be presumed guilty, and taxed on that basis.
The RIAA will buy laws that let them tax your ISP for carrying copyrighted data. They will have a tax placed on blank media and will then extend it to all hardware. They will buy laws that let them view all of your data traffic, and have your ports blocked or your service throttled or cut off. If they feel like having a show trial to try out their new laws, they will have you thrown in jail for longer than a murderer or a rapist, along with the sysadmins of ISPs and sites, including .govs and .edus, that refuse or fail to comply with their laws. They will control what hardware you can buy, and what operating systems and applications you can run on it. They will control what software you are allowed to write yourself, or to run on your own system. They will control who you can discuss software with.
If you think the RIAA is losing by making it clear how impossible it is to stop or monitor file sharing under the current model of the internet, then I urge you to have a think about how many of the extreme measures that I describe above already exists in the USA or other democracies, and I ask you who you honestly believe will still be laughing in ten years time.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
how do you propose artists make a living in this new world order?
Musicians have been making a living for thousands of years without the RIAA. Today, there are more professional musicians out there who DON'T have recording contracts with the RIAA than DO. Only a select few have the "advantage" of getting an RIAA-sponsored recording contract, and even fewer benefit from it, aside from the promotion that comes with it.
Non-american musicians make livings without the benefit of RIAA. Plus, other types of "Artists" (actors, painters, etc.) make livings without the benefit of the RIAA.
Without the RIAA, there will still be musicians. Musicians will still make money. Without RIAA, choices will increase, and quality will rise. Do not worry yourself about the plight of the "Artist" in a world without the RIAA--worry about the "Artist" in a world where their only option is the RIAA.
"... we have to get our customers back ..."
More like *drag* their customers back, kicking and screaming the whole way. Hello, maybe you should ask yourself why you've lost your customers in the first place?
I am NOT paying $17 for a copy of Eve6's CD.
If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
Please name the countries where copyright infringement is legal (as opposed to illegal but unenforced due to how widespread it is like in most parts of Asia).
Afghanistan. Hell, anything's legal there (except women feeding their families). But I am CERTAIN they don't care if you make a copy of an N*Sync CD.
That was my point about selling a million copies. Artists that go multi-platinum do fairly well while those that don't end up with a few good memories and sometimes in debt. This gamble is still preferable to making no money which is what the P2P services would eventually lead to given enough time.
Other replies to your original post already address this and do it better than I can, so read theirs.
This is very amusing. Why would anyone pay to download a song when they can get it for free on Morpheus, Gnutella, KaaZaa or Grokster?
You're not very observant are you? Look at the real world. Why would anyone buy a CD when they can get it for free on blah blah blah. People STILL buy music in a day and age where music can be got for free. It's reality. It will still be reality.
Wasn't there a recent Slashdot story about They Might Be Giants and how they were pissed at Napster because they had created an online presence only for Napster to render it all irrelvant?
It's not the consumers fault that they jumped on the bandwagon after someone else did. It's call competition. Sometimes other people get to ideas before you do.
BOTTOM LINE: For artists to make money from online music, free music services must disappear.
What a flaming crock of horse shit. You basically deny the existence of companies like RedHat that sell free software! That's right, they sell software that is given away for free everywhere else. The difference is, when you buy it, you get trimmings like actual CD's, manuals, and so forth. This model is very simple, works, seems pretty damn honest, and makes money. It could be very easily applied to the music industry.
Ugh, we need less of corporate bottom feeders like you.
Why bother.
Still, there is only *so* far the RIAA can go before civil liberties groups will take a large interest and show people what they are going to be losing out on. I can't help but feel that you are being a bit overly-paranoid ("what operating systems and applications!?" Intel, IBM and antitrust cases might have a disagreement with you there) but at the end of the day it all depends upon the regular joe's use of technology. Though this may happen in the US (unlikely but possible), it would be very unlikeley to happen in, say, singapore, china, thailand, etc. Just look at the example of DVD... though they control your hardware and your software... suprise! people have gotten round it and it is even encouraged in some countries (australia for one). The RIAA will not win the proverbial war, but will cause a lot of inconvenience for people in the short term. Cases like kazaa et al. just make it simpler for people to get around the RIAA telling them what to listen to and how to listen to it. So I will continue to laugh at them :D
I keep telling myself that, but either the RIAA are really dumb, or really clever. It's comforting to think that it's the former, but I fear that's egotism speaking.
And the DMCA wasn't dumb. It was risible, it might be struck down yet, but it's on the books, and it's hurting real people right now. It's easy for you and I to laugh at it, but I expect the people currently defending themselves against it might not agree. It's hard to get your head round it, but try and remember that DMCA isn't some theoretical bill. It actually exists. Once our legislators let that one through, they signalled that it was open season.
So now we have a proposed bill on mandatory copy control in hardware, with an intimation that OS's that bypass it will be illegal. OK, it's unpopular, it will probably be defeated, but we said that about the DMCA as well. And if it fails, there will be another one next year, and the year after that, until one much like it passes. Then we have to fight it on every point up to the supremes, and then they can just buy another bill.
The one thing that I have no doubt on is that internet traffic will be taxed. Germany and Australia already tax blank media on the basis that it's used overwhelmingly to copy protected material. The same argument applies to residential broadband connections. It's only a matter of time.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Micr'Soft is our bitch
Hmmm, that sounds a little forced. How about "Congress is our bitch"? Sounds better and is just as true!
Dyolf Knip
"you go to jail for providing a means of exchange"
Can't the government be sued for providing roads which drug suppliers use to deliver their drugs? One could argue that the government isn't providing it knowing that it will be used for illegal purposes, but then these P2P services don't exactly know that users are using their service to share copyrighted materials either.
If you think the RIAA is losing by making it clear how impossible it is to stop or monitor file sharing under the current model of the internet,...
There actually are several models under attack here, not just that of the Internet. They include:
Intellectual property/copyright; and
Music distribution
I would suggest that the RIAA is generating a lot of legal heat in order to support an outmoded distribution model. When they point out that there is no difference between a collection of MP3s and a CD, no one seems to ask the salient question: whose fault is that? Why isn't there an expectation that the record companies should work to innovate - to develop something deliverable on CD that *isn't* the same as a bunch of MP3s?
And there is a rising tide of discussion that perhaps there's something wrong with the current construction of copyright. The recently released Copyrights and Copywrongs points out the key issue that was also raised by Litman: somewhere along the way, the rationale for copyright has changed from promoting the intellectual commons to maximizing the economic incentives for innovation. And given that copyright has *always* (since the Statute of Anne in 1710) been about maximizing the likelihood that ideas get effective distribution (there's that word again!), it may be time to rethink the current mis-mosh of laws altogether.
I made a meager effort to get some of these ideas across in a class I'm teaching - the materials are online here
Let's fix this anaolgy shall we?
The musicians are the ones who should ba able to distribute the music at virtually no cost to themselves. However, the fans should not ab able to distribute the music as themusicians will see no profits from this. Your analogy assumes that music and art are created out of thin air, not by musicians and artisans. They (well we actually since I'm an artist) need to make a living. If I want to forgo the normal channels of displaying my work in an art museum, instead opting to display it online, then I can do this. This, however, does not give you or anyone else the right to copy this image without my permission.
"The RIAA will buy laws that let them tax your ISP for carrying copyrighted data. They will have a tax placed on blank media and will then extend it to all hardware. They will buy laws that let them view all of your data traffic, and have your ports blocked or your service throttled or cut off."
In Canada, there is already a tax on blank media, and it won't surprise me to find that a tax on data transfers is in the works.
Listen to this fellow, people: he's right on the money.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
However, the fans should not be able to distribute the music as the musicians will see no profits from this.
OK. Back to the original and fundamental point of my email: "The rules have changed". This is going to affect people in all kinds of professions, and it is going to seem unfair and unjust to many of them.
What rules have changed?
1) There is now virtually zero cost associated with duplicating certain products.
2) There is now virtually zero cost associated with distributing certain products.
3) There is now virtually zero cost associated with promoting certain products.
Of course, we can create technical enclosures where the above rules don't work. But unless we turn around progress, like the Luddites wanted to do, we cannot get rid of the above new rules. They are here to stay.
So what will this mean in practice? The record companies will have their technologies where the new rules don't work, and for a while that will slow their death. But the young kids of 2020 who want to be a famous pop group will know that if they make a great tune, record it, put it on the right web sites, email it to their friends, they'll know that if they are really good their fame will spread like wildfire and they'll get rich and famous, not from selling individual songs but from ad revenue on their web site, from mechandising, from product tie-ins, from playing live and giving live web concerts, etc...
Look at history. There are hundreds of examples of the rules changing which dramatically affect the way people make their income. It is only relatively recently that musicians have been able to sell a physical manifestation of their music - before they had to make their money by other means. The rules are changing again, and the artist and musician of the future will make their money in a different way than those of today. It might be technically possible for the musician of the future to use an uncopiable format, but they won't do it because it just won't be relevant any more and will be a restriction rather than a benefit.
ever heard of limewire?
http://www.limewire.org
they're working on supernodes as we speak.
hyperpoem.net
The reason buying a recording of a performance was worth money was because average folks couldn't make high-quality recordings easily. But that's no longer the case. I can make a recording of a song in my bedroom now that has the same quality as most studio recordings, and distribute it on CD's or MP3's for next to nothing.
It's not about the copying. It's about the product. The product has lost its value, yet they still charge the same price.
It's like what would happen if we changed from highly-controlled currency to "maple leaves" as currency. Eventually, the value of a "leaf" drops through the floor.
And as for the artists, there is a glut of highly talented performers and songwriters in the world, not a scarcity. That's why it's so hard to "break into" the industry.
So don't blame the handful of people who violate the SR copyrights. Their actions are merely a reflection of an efficient free market. There is a glut of talent and high-quality recording is now available to the masses. The value of the product has dropped, while the cost has stayed high. The result of this in an efficient market is that either fewer people will buy the product, or if demand has not waned, large numbers of people will resort to means of obtaining it at substantially less than it's worth.
The solution for the record companies is very simple. Charge less for CD's. Substantively less. I'm talking about $5-$6 per album, maximum.
What's that you say? You mean, people can't make a profit when the price is so low?
Of course they can't. And that's the point he was making. The technology has eliminated the industry.