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."

Comments

"Freenet needs food... badly!"

[Lee Bottemiller]

A wise man once said "Freenet views lawyers as damn apes and routes around them."

Do some thing useful with your Paypal account besides wandering ebay. Donate to Freenet

Hydra?

[Dr_Cheeks]

Ha, this is great. Napster starts up in response to the RIAA being mofos. They finally (after a long, hard battle that probably gave more publicity to the cause than it would otherwise have received) get it on their leash, and a bunch of other services spring up in it's wake, that all neatly try to skirt the legal issues that plagued Nap.

"Bugger" say the RIAA, and then decied to go after the few p2p options that are now in use. And if/when they finally get those shut down, a load more people will learn from that, and come up with another way to avoid the legal hassles. And all the time more and more regular users find out about the service. Eventually it's going to get to the point where there's more P2P services than there are RIAA lawyers (and a nice bit of collaboration and standardisation should help users seach multiple networks) - when are they going to figure out that this "If it moves and doesn't pay us money, sue it" game-plan isn't working?

Actually, I kinda hope they don't suss that one out.

and then what?

[donabal]

the "killed" napster, and three offshoot services became big.

then kill these three and you'll get more.

if they thought about things for just a little bit, they would understand that they are just taking up too much time and making the problem bigger for themselves.

what they SHOULD do is go bother some annoying people... perhaps the HarryFox agency could help out this terrorist hunt -- if we dont catch the terrorist, we could at least strike in him the fear of taking away his mp3s.

--donabal

And we won't stop until we reach your silicon

[Rogerborg]

• "We have solid claims against FastTrack, MusicCity, and Grokster of secondary liability for copyright infringement. The claims are not as strong as those against Napster, but they are also not so remote as to be wishful,"

At first I laughed out loud at the ignorance of the RIAA (and the MPAA if you read the memo) believing that they could actually stamp out file sharing. But then I had a re-think, and saw only one way for this to go.

The RIAA will lose this one. Oh, maybe they'll win the lawsuits, or maybe they'll get the commercial developers to whore for them like Napster.

But the sharing will go on. Open source protocols and clients will spring up faster than they can beat them down. The genie is out of the bottle, and they can't put it back in. They can't win this through marketing, or through software technology, or through individual litigation.

The only way that the RIAA/MPAA can win this is by changing the world, starting with the USA.

The RIAA will use this case as a platform to push the overwhelming need for hardware copy control, for the banning or restriction of non-<strike>corporate</strike>governme nt controlled software including operating systems, for taxation of ISPs (who make money from facilitating the sharing of copyrighted material, and so are fair game), and for the need for easy <strike>corporate</strike>government access to ISP logs so that a trickle of users can be caught, given show trials using the laws the RIAA/MPAA have bought, and given harsher sentences than murderers and rapists.

So, while we can all have a good laugh about how stupid the RIAA are being by thinking that they can win this, just as we laughed at them for thinking that killing Napster would solve the problem, let's not forget that they're not idiots.

I truly believe that they are playing a long game here. They use idiotic lawsuits to demonstrate how helpless they are. They scream about every tiny periodic drop in CD sales and blame it on Napster (now Morpheus et al), while ignoring that overall sales and profit is up. They pay a few super-rich artists to wail about how sharing steals from them and tramples on their rights (neatly ignoring that nearly all artists sell all rights to one of five huge companies).

All of this is done to prepare the way for their bought politicians as they submit and re-submit ever harsher variations on the same dreadful laws that say: the profit of a few CEO's and major shareholders is a right that must be protected, regardless of the cost to individuals..

Cutting it down even further, let me suggest that there are perhaps two dozen people in the world who will lose out significantly if commercial sales of CD's and DVD's drops off (which isn't happening). These people are already rich beyond the dreams of avarice. They're not interested in profit or money in real terms, all they care about is the number of digits in their latest stock option exercise, because that shows that they're winners. That's all that matters, that they win the numbers game.

So the next time you gasp in horror at Son of DMCA, remember that it's even worse that it first looks. It's not about real people, or real money measured in human terms. It's about nothing more than two dozen men (and women) saying: I demand profit so that no one will question the size of my dick.

Re:it will all go back to how it used to be.

[Rogerborg]

• 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

Lucky you. Not banned, but how will you feel about having all of your traffic taxed on the presumption of guilt? That's where we're going here, and every time the RIAA demonstrates the futility of individual litigation, we get a little closer.