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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."
since the servers use encryption, someone must feel that the RIAA can't tell what's going on unless they break the DMCA. The funny thing is (and even the letter says so) they can get a court order to break the encryption to find out what is really going on. I am sorry to say, but the RIAA legal team has their shit together and these systems can expect to be taken down. There will always be something new that pops up, however.
This strikes me very funny. All of these programs are nothing but wrapped up Gnutella clients. What are they going to do? Start filing lawsuits against the companes who create FTP servers/clients? Newsgroup decoders? Puhleeze.
There is no way that the RIAA will be successful here. I don't know why people think that they actually will be able to go after MusicCity and WIN.
If they succeed in getting rid of Morpheus/Kazaa, then they should go after other famous transport mechanisms for files:
1) wu-ftpd
2) wsftp
3) cuteftp
4) any alt.binaries newsgroups
5) any newsgroup decoders
6) all major web browser
7) inventors of the FTP protocol.
8) inventors of the telnet protocol
9) inventors of SSL
10) inventors of HTTP
... basically they should try to eliminate all forms of data transport.
Not gonna happen.
They've proved that an automatic two tier system can work (with user-node and super-node systems automatically finding the most efficient way of aggregating data).
Now we need a piece of software that will do all of this without the need for a central company. That way the RIAAA _can't_ shut it down.
Come on guys, we're one step away from success here - the power of Napster/FastTrack with the freedom of Gnutella - let's show them it can be done.
My Journal
The RIAA seems insistent upon escalating this pointless arms race. I am honestly surprised at their complete lack of foresight. They sued Napster into obscurity and walked away with absolutely nothing to show for it -- except for lending to the explosion of PtP networks. Now they're training thier massive guns on an even more wily target and expect to accomplish something? WTF?
I'm all for musicians' rights, however I am also very much anti-arrogance and anti-stupidity. If you're a member of the RIAA, I implore you (the technically savvy musician) to speak out against this pointless game. The rest of us, well... I'll be seeing you on Freenet.
Checkmate, Hilary!
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
Show me one.
There are currently NO brand new markets in that industry, and if the RIAA gets it's way there will not be any. They are busy protecting their old market.
My take on this is that the RIAA is going to use their weight to form this "brand new market" to their liking. So we'll end up with a brand new market that's suspiciously like the good ole market: pay through your nose for music that you can't copy without a reduction in quality.
--Bud
after all you can find anything you want there as well, they may not promote it that way, but it can (and is) done
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Before the RIAA sued napster, nobody in the general public had ever heard of Mp3s or sharing.
During the 2 odd years they took to tie napster into a legally binding state of disrepair, the Napster network grew almost 10 fold in size.
Finally, when it died, everyone just migrated to gnutella for a month or two, before they realised it was S*it slow, and moved onto MusicCity....
Now the process seems to be repeating. All MusicCity has to do is move it's entire advertising budget into it's legal department, and wait until every person on the street starts associating them with "Music sharing".
You'd think the RIAA would've learnt from before, and be looking at ways to work WITH the community.
Computer Software has been pirated since day 1, yet Bill Gates, chairman of a company which makes Computer Software is the richest person in the world. I would say this is some pretty compelling evidence indicating that people pirating your music/software isn't nessessarily a bad thing.
On the flipside, the powers that be have done a pretty good job strangling the DVD market here in Australia. We are charged royalties on BLANK DVD-Roms.
Indicitive costs of DVDs in AU:
One blank DVD: $30
Die Hard on DVD: $35
Why would you pirate? (Thank god for DivX)
There used to be a need for the industry when vinyl and CDs were the primary distribution mechanism for music. They held the whip hand over musicians, in the same way music publishers and patrons did in Mozart's day.
Now that musicians can produce their own material and sell it without reference to the music industry then there is little need for them.
In the push for online music we must not impoverish the artists who produce it. The fact that the music industry's profits disappear is irrelevant.
Sadly not. IANAL and all that, but as I understand it, the relevant part of the DMCA says that if you own the copyright in something and you put some sort of access control on it, such as encryption, it's illegal for someone else to circumvent that access control. Clearly, p2p users don't own the copyright in all those Britney Spears tracks that they're swapping, so the DMCA doesn't apply here. The RIAA may have to get a court order to intercept p2p communications, but they're entirely within their rights to break any encryption that might be in use.
For those who enjoy tweaking lawyers' noses, create a file that's about the right size to be an MP3. (They use about a megabyte per minute at 128Kbit/s.) Something like an uncompressed high-resolution photograph of you at your desk should do. Encrypt it with rot13 or xor63. Then call it something like Metallica-Enter Sandman.mp3 and share it on every p2p network you can find. When the lawyers come calling, remind them that they have to prove that the file really is a Metallica track. When they break your encryption and find that the file isn't what they thought it was, countersue them for violating the DMCA.
Just a thought...
Just another wannabe fantasy novelist...
Ten years back, when i was 0dAY-War3z junkie, most BBS used "disclaimers" such as "If you are affiliated with law enforcement and such, and don't state that in your account, yoùr are not allowed in this system." (And if person stated to be in law enforcement he would be deleted).
Were/are these means actually effective in a legal sense? If I ran a system like this, could evidence gathered by breaking the rules of MY User License Agreement be used in court? Or was that just a cover-your-ass vaccine sysops used to get some good night sleep at all?
+++ath0
So the future's looking pretty bright here.
Napster is turned into a pathetic excuse for a service and looses all users. The users then flock to other alternatives (Morpheus, Grokster, et. al) and these become the shining beacons in file sharing. Then they go after them and shut them down. 9 more alternatives popup which are quickly shut down. Then 27, 81, 243 then thousands of file sharing programs ream the planet and nobody can keep up.
In the meantime, the RIAA shuts down all playing of CDs on computers by copy-protecting them. DVDs are banned from computer players as well. So much for that multi-media concept. Your computer is back to being a system that runs software, but forget about running anything except Winamp playing MP3s that are deemed "acceptable" (whatever that means and whatever Barry Manillow songs you can download from the web).
I still fail to see any proof that Napster or any of these file sharing programs (central based or not) are making any impact on the reduced sales of music media. If anything that has been learned by this fairly time wasting effort it's that Napster promoted the songs and artists and let people make more informed decisions about buying or not buying that album. The RIAA should treat this as an educational lesson not an attack. The artists should look at it as a godsend and start making albums that have content that people want, not just filler material to cram onto a 12 song CD.
Of course this battle will go on forever. We have open source alternatives, engines and libraries that allow anyone with a compiler and half a brain to make the next Napster. So for every one the RIAA shuts down, three more will be right around the corner to replace it. If you can't beat them, then join them. What's next? Let's shut down Google, Alta Vista and Yahoo because they allow people to search for music (just like Napster, Morpheus, etc.) and you can download copyright material right to your hard drive! Oh my. What is the world coming to.
Wake up RIAA. You're just pissing more people off and you can't win, but there are alternatives to fighting.
liB
I am a wealthy IT professional, and I assume that a lot of you here are too.
Assuming that we could get a lot of people similar to myself to contribute $100, could we buy the ability to shut down the RIIA's legal efforts for awhile?
It appears to me that we have two options: attack their lawyers or attack their revenue sources. If we don't do one of these things effectively, they will continue to oppress the public (and us specifically).
I'm tired of listening to the RIAA tell me how bad I am. Let's do something!
Doing so may be a breach of agreement when you use the software for those purposes. It could open the RIAA and it's member organizations to countersuits, etc.
They're not entirely stupid- they want the upper hand on this situation from start to finish. If they don't go about it in a just-so manner, they don't have the upper hand.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Actually, Russia. They didn't sign the Berne Convention or whatever it's called, so infringing a US copyright isn't illegal.
It's actually legal for you to fly to Russia, buy a copied CD/DVD/Piece of software and then fly home. NO law has been broken unless you choose to sell the stuff...
Gav
"There's no such thing as data that can't be manipulated"
Downloading files and sharing them is NOT theft. There is no natural property right in intellectual "property", unlike tangible property. At least, not in the US. Art. I sec. II clause 8 of the US constitution is the source of authority for IP law. That clause was never meant to establish ideas or even the expressions of ideas as property like real property or chattel. If it had, rights holders would retain their rights indefinitely, passing them down from generation to generation just like the family farm.
IP law was intended basically to be a bribe to induce people to create. Copyright law is a restriction on speech, but the trade-off was accepted as promoting more speech overall. What burns me is when you read transcripts of testimony in the Senate or House concerning extensions of the copyright term, they don't say the term needs to be lengthened to promote more speech, they claim that the greater term is needed to protect the rights-holders, basically to protect the industry.
This looks less like Congress is trying to promote the creation of works, and more like Congress is just trying to preserve a huge industry. Sure, the US derives tremendous economic benefit from maxed out copy protection terms and rigorous enforcement, but Congress has no business curtailing speech to prop up an industry.
Music execs are all for free speech when it means Eminem can appeal to millions of suburban "G"s, but when something like napster comes along, they fold up their pocket constitutions, whip out their cell phones and hit their lawyer's number on speed-dial.
Remember, lawyers don't sue people, people sue people
This interpretation actually likens Hillary the Harpie's strategy to that of the US government, under the leadership of the winged monkey, in pursuing "war" against a methodology called terrorism (which is about as bright, in my book, as pursuing war against methodologies like pragmatism, or immunochemical histology, but then winged monkeys ain't made to be bright). I'd have the same advice for H the H as I have for W the Schmuck - give peace a chance, and, for the love of all that is decent and right, STEP DOWN NOW!
People like you make me sick! The U.S. always gives peace a chance. We promote it in Ireland and with Israel's problems. We offer a peace-loving country, open to all religions, including Islam. We were then ruthlessly attacked by delusional psychotics clinging to their pseudo-Islam religion to brainwash similarly disenfranchised, pissed off Middle Easterners.
In exchange, has Bush launched a carpet bombing of Afghanistan, or any other nation that sponsors or harbors terrorists? No. He has been making careful plans for weeks now, while Americans have been screaming for blood. Presumably if they were going to carpet bomb some place, it would have been done by now. They've made it clear they are going after surgical strikes and unique ways of fighting terrorism (cutting off funding, putting extreme pressure on those countries that harbor them, etc).
And you propose to Bush to 'give peace a chance.'
If anyone's a schmuck here, it's you. You should be saying the same thing to Osama bin Laden, et. al., not to anyone in the United States government.
And no, I did not, nor would not vote for W. I'm a card-carrying libertarian.
But I know a load of ignorant bullshit when I smell it.
"And like that
Musicians and record labels have had a good run, but perhaps it's time to give up. With few exceptions, I don't think any popular major-label musician is talented enough to earn what they make from their music. The money they make is a result of the recording industry's ability to promote.
Consider the hundreds of thousands of musical artists that aren't signed to a major label. What separates them from their signed counterparts? Promotion. The money the signed artists receive isn't based on their talent, but their management's ability to drive up demand for their art through many marketing techniques. Of course one entity controlling both the supply and demand of something is a dangerous situation.
I wonder some times if the RIAA is really afraid of peer-to-peer file sharing, or something deeper. It may be that they're not just losing their ability to control the supply, but losing control of demand as well. When I found songs I likes on Napster, I would always view other songs that that user was sharing, and inevitably find more songs I liked. In many cases these songs were not artists under RIAA-member managers. Could this be what RIAA is afraid of?
_______
2B1ASK1
The RIAA is intent on suing our rights out of existence, so why aren't we suing them into the ground? Is there a class action suit against them out there? If not, can one be begun? According to new sites online there are millions of users who are affected by this, and it seems to me that if even half of those people donated $10 to a legal effort we'd have a real war chest. Clearly the EFF is not going to do this, so we need to find someone/thing who will. If you know of one, please pipe up.
And the second thing I wonder about is how can we build an alternative to the record companies and their business model for the musicians? The fans and consumers are pissed off, but as long as the musicians largely stay with the record companies, then the RIAA and its ilk will still act like they control the music supply. If the musicians believe they'll starve without the record companies, then they sure won't be on our side. We need a real plan to convince the musicians that there is a better way to reach their fans.
I read the internal memos, and it sure looks like RIAA has been analyzing the packets, and using "reverse engineering" techniques to figure out how to defeat the fast track technology.
Does anyone think the RIAA can be prosecuted under DMCA or any of the various "computer crime" laws? In essense, we have the RIAA accessing other people's data in an unauthorized way.
I wonder if this might be a great use of "weak" encryption; just enough to make use of DMCA.
I just love this quote from Ms. Rosen... "It is time to get coordinated and aggressive with the new round of peer to peer services. The amount of music being downloaded is, as you know, reaching unprecedented levels. Since college started last week Morpheus traffic was up to 19 million downloads per day. AND THAT'S JUST MORPHEUS. With the imminent launch of legitimate subscription services we have to get our customers back," Rosen told executives at various major labels, Yahoo, Real Networks, Microsoft and AOL in an email. the part I took note of was the "we have to get our customers back...", The more I read about this topic, the more it makes me think that /. needs to put the 'ol Borg outfit on Ms Rosen.
People do NOT want to be dragged kicking and screaming back to purchasing overpriced CDs and
tapes, that's the whole problem they have to
realize. If they want to get their customers back,
they should develop a competing system, otherwise
come up with a different, cheaper distribution system. P2P will not stop as long as entertainment
media (especially of the digital variety) is so
ridiculously overpriced. It will even flourish
as more people like Ms Rosen try to strangle it
to death with litigation.