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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!
We have many lawyers
You listen to our music
Micr'Soft is our bitch
I think there's a radon leak in the RIAA offices and crack in their water-cooler...
Bill - "hey Jim, let's try and shut down a Peer-to-peer network today. They might be using it to do illegal stuff"
Jim - What's a "peer-to-peer"?
Bill - "damned if I know, I heard about it on Oprah"
Jim - "sure, I'm in. It's not like we do any real work around here."
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
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.
I cant wait to see: :))
1. The moment when the industry realises how good they could have had it before they fscked up the server model of napster compared to a distributed self organising network
2. The moment when some dumb exec decides the only way to stop it is to take out EVERY supernode
3. The RIAA resort to hiring hundreds of consultants to try and fix the unfixable problem
4. The RIAA eventually succeed in closing down the big three and just as it happens, giFT is finished and goes mainstream, or even better fasttrak release the source (I can dream cant I
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.
Napster was a nice distraction, but I'm back to doing the same thing I did before Napster came about and there's no way for the RIAA to stop it.
Not that they should. What they should do is just get a clue. But they're not thinking outside the box, they're not adjusting to a new form of distribution for music. Napster came out late 1999. MP3s have been around since 1997, and that's not counting how old CDDA trading is. You'd think in 4 years they could've come up with a smart, valuable system. Oh well...
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
"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.
As far as I know all these three services use one common engine by that makes it possible for them to interoperate with each other. Basically, a user who is using Morpheus can download files shared by KaZaA and vice versa.
Because of this, at present, these three together form the largest network (far larger than napster or even gnutella's break-brick-block kind of network).
As fasttrack says, this architecture is distributed, self-organising network. Neither search requests nor actual downloads pass through any central server. The network is multi-layered, so that more powerful computers get to become search hubs ("SuperNodes"). Any client may become a SuperNode, if it meets the criteria of processing power, bandwidth and latency. Network management is 100% automatic - SuperNodes appear and disappear according to demand.
Basically, unstoppable!....You can stop the development of the code, and the program, but not the existing network. Just like gnutella.
For sure, they are RIAA, MPAA and the software industry's largest and the hardest to destroy enemies because they also allow users to share movies and programs.
Now that's what they say, let's see what the reality is!
Check out the emails on FuckedCompany! MIRRORS! RIAA lawyers are
saying its going to be tougher then Napster. Juicy stuff!
Here and Here
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
Let's take a quote from the giFT page:
Can you say "Ooops?"
Right - so you need to shut down your competition so that you may get more money. If think we should file an anti-trust lawsuit against the RIAA. And what defines legitimate anyway? I'm curious to know where a law exists that says you must be held liable by what people use your sofware to transfer since your company would be classified as a carrier. And the data doesn't even pass through their services anyway!
SIG: HUP
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.
Thus, we recommend (1) filing claims against FastTrack, MusicCity, and Grockster, (2) immediately thereafter initiating discussions with FastTrack about resolving our claims in a way that will provide us with useful information and testimony against MusicCity, and if possible obtain FastTrack's cooperation in shutting down or converting MusicCity and Grokster, and (4) continue forward with litigation against MusicCity, Grokster, and potentially Timberline Venture Partners.
Gee, these guys manage to find out so much about the structure of the FT network, and yet they don't know how to count to three?
[we do not know the nature of these communications/encryption/etc].
In the emails at fuckedcompany.com I found in this post, I read a number of instances where they plainly stated that they didn't know about how services uses FastTrack worked. I find it very amusing that they're threating lawsuits, but they don't have all the facts at their disposal. If they do not understand how the communications take place, how can they even assume that they can place liability on someone for "damages"?
Why bother.
This phrase has a couple of possble connotations. First would be "we need to bring our former customers back into the fold, and offer them some incentive to once again lavish our industry with extravagant and entirely unearned gifts of their precious, precious cash." This is, of course, not bloody likely, given that Hillary the Harpie views "customers" in much the same way as a vampire bat views an Argentinian cow.
The second, and much more likely, interpretation of her statement, is that the RIAA must seek some revenge against those who perhaps used to be paying customers, but were swayed by the RIAA's own retail guerilla tactics to pursue a different path, i.e., file sharing. 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!
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
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"
In truth, it cant go "down"...
It is what gnutella should have been.. its decentralized so a company failure cant stop it, it is fast (instead of everyone being a node, only high bandy people are super nodes that carry searches), and contains encryption between sender and receiver so noone could tell what was happening...
The thing is, RIAA can sue Morpheus all they want... what are they going to do? Change the webpage that a Morpheus app goes to at the start to be one that says "please stop using this product" -- or maybe just put out an update (giving people the chance to choose to install it or not.. yea!) that disables morpheus...
I think the RIAA's hands are pretty tied in stopping the application... now destroying the morpheus and kazaa owners/coders.. thats in their reach -- but since they cant stop the app, it seems kinda pointless to me (though, I am sure, not to them)...
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?
ZDNet story
CNet story
Interesting story at BBC News
:wq!
One thing that interests me, however, is that KaZaA is much more than audio file sharing. You can download audio, video, software, images and documents, and only one of those categories applies to the RIAA. I suppose it only takes one category, but it's interesting that no other companies or industry representives have become involved (yet, to my knowledge). I wouldn't be too amazed if the MPAA joined the fray, not to mention numerous software companies.
The thing is...how long can this go on for? Someone sets up a filesharing network. The RIAA sues them, bringing their vast financial resources to bear, which means that any other resources they require can be bought. They close-mindedly bring about the destruction or complete alteration of the network, not taking into account many technicalities like the way that Napster was demonstrated to actually boost CD sales, and that the server owners should not be held responsible for the traffic on their network, just as ISPs cannot. But in this time, another network has popped up in its place. In fact, several networks.
How long can this continue? Surely the RIAA must realise that it is a futile proposition (at present) to attempt to take down every filesharing network that may allow access to copyrighted material? I suppose that's why they are attempting to pass more and more fascist laws, and are encouraging other countries to do the same, in order to maintain their somewhat archaically-based real-world manopoly. Surely there must be an easier way for record companies etc to protect their copyrights, within reason, but to allow filesharing like this within reason as well (and I'm not specifically thinking of subscription). It seems that the RIAA, MPAA et al, rather than go with the flow and try new avenues of profit on the net, are attempting to stand firm in a present system that is rapidly becoming a part of the past. I am reminded of the SG-1 Archive, which was recently featured in Showtime's magazine (since Showtime produces Stargate SG-1), where the site was apparently hailed as a source of information on the series, and yet a couple of weeks later the webmaster received a CAD letter from the MPAA and was forced to remove the episodes available for download. This would not be a problem, legally speaking, if Showtime had objected to the site; but they hadn't. They had praised it. Apparently the MPAA is simply doing the rounds, attempting to scare everyone into submission, and sue those who are brazen enough to resist, despite the wishes of the people producing the actual material (who the Stargate SG-1 copyrights actually belong to I am not entirely certain, but I believe it is MGM/Showtime).
Having said that, I fearlessly and without disclaimer (partly because slashdot thinks my IP is a 203.97 subnet, which it's not) acknowledge that all the software and mp3s on my computer are pirated, and that I feel little remorse. Being what I hope is a morally upright person, this disturbs me somewhat, but when I see the sort of things that Microsoft, the RIAA, the MPAA etc do, and the tactics they resort to, I seem to feel a lot better. As a writer, I put a certain value on intellectual property, and I also accept that people will copy and distribute my work illegally. This doesn't bug me particularly, partly because I'd be a hypocrite if it did, and partly because people will still buy my work, despite those who pirate it. When I look at how bloated with money MS, RIAA etc are, I hardly feel sympathic.
disclaimer My ideas and arguments are subject to minor alteration depending on circumstances, and are probably slightly bigoted and not as balanced as those that I normally produce. Taken completely objectively, you may well be able to tear holes in them. If you feel the inclination to do this I would be appreciative, as I am still formulating my own opinions in this matter; however, I ask that you don't flame simply for the sake of flaming...it doesn't tend to be conducive to constructive conversation.
A word can paint a thousand pictures
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...
FastTrack, a Netherlands-based company
p in c=+next+%3E%3E&last_str=fasttrack&page=0
According to the article FastTrack is supposed to be in the Netherlands... It definitely is not. Although there is a site called FastTrack.NL it has nothing to do with the software used by Grokster, Kazaa and Morpheus.
According to the whois info it is a Chattsworth CA based company.
http://www.whois.net/search.cgi2?str=fasttrack&
Look at entry #40.
And Congress has thrown law enforcement behind the copyright holders in an act passed in 1998 after the David LaMacchia case (an MIT student who offered a central repository for the exchange of software). You don't have to upload software personally or benefit in any way from the exchange of software--you go to jail for providing a means of exchange. I don't think I'm giving away any secret here; while the law was probably passed at the behest of the software industry, it must be known to the recording industry too.
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)
Some info I couldn't find on their web page...
Does giFT run under windows?
Does giFT automatically promote clients to supernodes?
does giFT allow multiple downloads of the same file from different sites, to speed downloads and prevent loss of data if a source vanishes?
If it does all three of those, then I'm there!
My Journal
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.
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.
Why doesn't the RIAA just go all the way and charge us all a connection fee? I mean, since we're all obviously thieves, and they can't trust us (hell, we can't copy our own CDs anymore, can we?) why should we be getting away with using our modems, DSL lines, and cable connections without paying the RIAA, to whom we obviously owe some sort of tribute?
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
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?
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...
"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.
---
Hello? "we have to get our customers back"? What the heck is THAT supposed to mean?
Are we supposed to merrily spend our money on whatever fucked up business plan THEY find suitable? I wonder how much longer it will take for them to realise that the bird's out of the cage.
Without the ability to run its own SuperNodes, giFT is hardly better than Gnutella. The fantastic thing about FastTrack was thw ability to perform extremely quick searches, because your searches didn't need to get distributed to tens of thousands of nodes, just the main supernodes.
Without this, the traffic swamps the network before it can scale well.
My Journal
"... 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 $17 for a copy of Eve6's CD.
If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
You don't prosecute someone from another country doing things that are legal there and not legal here.
Please name the countries where copyright infringement is legal (as opposed to illegal but unenforced due to how widespread it is like in most parts of Asia).
Artists literally can get checks from the RIAA of 0.12$US for a 20$US record sale.
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.
Artists could make a LOT more money if they distributed online and took all the profits from said sales (and more power to them on doing this - I would buy music if my money was going to the artist, and not the RIAA).
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? 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?
BOTTOM LINE: For artists to make money from online music, free music services must disappear.
Check out giFT and the GUI kift.
This network is a lot better than gnutella, faster and more reliable, really good.
I have been using it with joy, very good downloads, excellent. Then 5 days ago the assholes at fasttrack changed the format, centralized the access, you know NEED a central server to get the passphrase. No more decentralized network. It was called a "security update"
So, I hope they DIE a horrible legal death, greedy sobs. No compassion.
The companies involved have NO interest in a free client at all.
Read the whole story at the homepage of giFT:
http://gift.sourceforge.net/press_9_29_01.html
Moritz
Right now there's a lot of file swapping services out there, but none like Napster. Napster offered a central location to share your stuff. Now with all the clones, the file sharing is spread out and finding what you want can sometimes be a challenge, hopping service to service. Thank you RIAA for starting to clean some of this up and centralize sharing a bit more.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
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.
The RIAA's trying to end
Programs that all they do's send
Tunes from my 'puter
To yours, through Bermuder
Without paying them or paying their friends
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!
"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.
So although it's the customers who are considered to be the actual ones 'violating copyrighted works', we're going to litigate the technology companies who provide all those degenerates the method to 'violate copyrights' in an effort to win back all those degenerates as paying customers once again? That does not make sense to me. Besides, college students are probably RIAA's biggest customer base in the first place, so screwing them over by getting rid of their favorite technology toys sounds like a bad business decision, despite whatever laws you may be trying to uphold. And it's pretty clear that the RIAA is in it for the money, not for protecting artist's interests.
Every so often, something happens that changes the rules by which the world, and in particular the business world, operates.
A few personal examples. My grandfather was a professional signwriter. Not so long ago if you needed a sign above a shop, for instance, you used to have to go to a signwriter, who would labouriously paint it by hand. There are of course very few of them about nowadays because there are so many other ways to create signs. A perverse way of looking at this would be to think that the signwriter profession has been 'robbed' of its rightful earnings because bad technology has made them irrelevant.
My grandmother was a double entry book-keeper, a kind of accountant's clerk. She would labourously enter figures by hand into big books, do sums and checks to make sure everything was correct. My grandmothers profession has also been 'robbed' of its earnings because it has been made irrelevant by those bad computers.
The men and women of the record companies have made money in the past by promoting music, making copies of it and distributing it. Their profession has been made irrelevant because the Internet means that anyone can promote, copy and distribute music at virtually zero cost. They are desperately trying to stop this happening, but being a record company is becoming just as irrelevant as being a signwriter or double entry book-keeper.
In the short-term the record companies will use their financial power to get bad laws passed which will slow this natural development down. But in the longer term, sorry folks, but you're history.
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
If they didn't have a warrant, it might be. Unless it's known to be a warren for warez or hack info, they'd not have enough for probable cause and that would mean they broke into the system without either probable cause or warrant- which, while it's an LEO doing it, still makes it a computer crime in and of itself.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
You do know that Reagan actually said that about the Iran Contras in 1987 right? Oh but, it comes up ina google search, so it MUST be true.
unless they, due to consolidation or collusion keep their prices for their firmware products artificially high
Reading the RIAA memo, the word collusion came to mind immediately. For instance:
You are all competitors, but you have common interests in enforcement. Help me help you.
This sounds as if Al Capone was writing a nice suggestive note to the mob in another market. Where's the DoJ? Instead of breaking this recording industry racket, we've got shills like Jesse Helms out making it a felony to refuse to be exploited.
*scoove*
"The users who share copyrighted files are the ones breaking the law. "
And under existing "fair use" case law, even that is not necessarily illegal, though the industry is trying hard to propagandize us into thinking it is. Existing legal precedences say that you can make a cassette of songs for your buddy, as long as you don't sell it to him, and as long as you don't engage in mass duplication for everyone. Napster, despite the rhetoric, was merely one-to-one sharing, just done many times over. Where the legal limit should be in that case wasn't made clear, but it is not necessarily illegal to share copyrighted files in certain cases.
At least, not yet...
________________
Private Essayist
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Look at this chart [warning: Acrobat file produced by the Evil Empire] and check the numbers.
2000 was the first year that overall sales went down. They lost 2.6% of the total retail value of products shipped.
Meanwhile, in 1999, they gained 7.3% on total retail value. That's a lot of dollars, nearly all of it coming in the form of full-length CD sales. (For CD singles, the peak year was 1997. For full-length cassettes and cassingles, the peak year was 1992.)
Napster operated for a lot of 2000, but it was interfered with greatly. I expect music sales to decline further this year, which has been generally napsterless.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
You cannot base laws on statistics of behavior because the statistics change over time.
Let's say, should we say we're to ban www altogether when "oh, now that 99% of the surfers are downloading pr0n!!"??
Or, should we ban the use of public washrooms because "99% of the users don't flush the toilets"?
And each time the community adapts, it does get stronger. The RIAA attacks a weakness in the system, the next version "corrects" that weakness. The RIAA is helping create the ultimate file-trading application that will A)be perfectly legal within current laws B)robust enough to handle immense system demands and C)hide the users from simple investigation creating an anonymous file-trading system.
And who really benefits from this? The people who are using it for society damaging illegal activities. In this level of perverse logic, the RIAA is helping create a superflu that undermines society. (Yes, it is a slippery slope argument and yes, it is only done partly tongue-in-cheek).
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
We need to remember that programers and lawyers are in essentially the same business--bending complex systems to their will. Just because the programers pull a nifty twist, we shouldn't assume that the lawyers won't have an equally devious "Ah, but I'm not left handed either" response.
-- MarkusQ
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
A few years back, IIRC, Jesse Helms, former chair of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee (and credible evidence that neanderthals still walk among us) was pushing or backing some legislation which would restrain trade with Canada (the U.S.'s largest trading partner in the world!) because they were still on friendly terms with Cuba.
U.S. policy, often shaped by commercial interests, could be to place economic pressure on Nevis, i.e. no U.S. commercial flights to land there, harrass people with visas, impose huge duties or restrict exports to Nevis, etc. It used to be that the U.S. waged war, assassination, covert ops for commercial interests. (I remain convinced that U.S. policy toward Cuba has nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with the seizure of land and property, it's their right as it's their country, but tell that to the U.S. Govt.)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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.
The consumers. The consumers are the absolute highest power in the economic process. Consumers provide the money that makes the whole damn thing work. If consumers decide they don't want to spend the money, then all those musicians who are in it for the bucks are just out of luck. We as consumers have the right to force the music or whatever industry to do exactly what we want. The only trouble is getting us all organized. This guy did it. He said, "you don't have to pay for a high quality operating system", and made it happen, changing the face of the software industry.
WHY do you all persist in being such slaves to corporate power!? We all have a choice on what we want to consume an how!
Why bother.
American Flag - Fade to whitehouse, and bush sitting in his chair.
(Que background music)
Bush: God bless America - where speech is free (unless its owned by a big company) (or the government) and justice is served fairly (along as it makes money [dmca]). But now, now its being changed! changed by a small people, people who will do anything to harm the freedom. These people are called 'file sharers' They are evil hackers who roam the sea of the Internet pirating as they go. The use their ships of software to go from point2point. They steal from the poorest artists and the companies that represent them (poor artists like Jackson and struggling companies like Warner, Polydor etc.) They trade sick and pornographic images that no human should be subjected to (because no-one actually _wants_ to see Alysa Milano lesbian action) and whats more, they send plans of terrorism! Yes, thats right, Bin-Laden and the Taliban used these systems to swap images and files containing hidden plans for their terrorist attacks! These people must be stopped, they are as guilty as Bin-Laden himself! To save America you, the citizens, must vigil and report these people. Do your duty for your country and your family. If you see anyone using file sharing programs, report them to the authorities (who will have their equipment destroyed and them put in prison for a long long time) and save America. Everyone must decide: You are either against file sharing, or your with Bin Laden!! No amount of bolding and repeating, repeating! can do enough to stress the importance of this.
Thank You, and, goodnight.
Fade Out, titles
"this presidential speech is protected under federal copyright laws, reproducing it in any form without prior consent is a federal offence carrying penalties of upto (15) years imprisonment."
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I don't think I should give any more money to the RIAA and well half the 'artists' out these days usually suck anyway.
Go ahead and moderate this down as overrated and let your ass bleed profusely for moderating this down!
Only 'flamers' flame!
Considering the quality of the music that they have created via "producing, promoting, and distributing" I would like them to go broke as quickly as possible.
When I frequented places where live music was performed, the quality averaged much higher than I hear on the CDs now. Still, there's a lot of personal taste in this, I admit. But it's also true that the "music industry" has had a large part in the shaping of that taste. And I feel that it has been a major factor in the degradation of the standards of music. I certainly wouldn't want to claim that it was the only factor, but it was a major factor.
There are definitely age related taste issues. People of one age do not prefer the same music or the same issues as people of a different age. But that does not suffice to explain the degradation of quality. I think that it was around the period that "heavy metal rock" first became popular that I noticed this phenomena really kick into gear. It was one of the factors that really convinced me that advertising works. (I noticed other examples later, but that's the first time I saw a convincing example.)
Fads are to be expected. "Valley Girl" talk is an example. It was probably pushed commercially, but it was essentially a natural phenomena. This isn't what I'm talking about. And it's also true that, e.g., the Beatles actually were exceptionally gifted, so it would be unreasonable to expect the subsequent groups to maintain their standard. But the current (last few decades) groups have fallen far below the standards of even SF Fan groups. They are actually LESS tallented than people who don't bother to develop their musical abilities as a profession.
So those companies can't go broke too quickly to suite me.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Now, maybe I'm missing something here, but from the memo, it seems pretty clear they've been hacking into the packets of FastTrack's protocol. They know the packets are encrypted (and don't know how), which seem to me to imply that they've actually tried to determine what the encryption is. Now, wouldn't that violate the DMCA they so cherish?
While I'm unaware of whether or not FastTrack has applied for a copyright (I'm sure they have) on their protocol, it is under copyright protection the moment it is created.
Sounds like they've been reverse-engineering FastTrack's protocol. Hmm, I think it's time for these guys to sue the RIAA.
Are these encrypted communications copyrighted? Are they even copyrightable? (Are they an expression of something? Whose expression are they?)
Your best line of argument might be that the output of the software, is somehow a derivative work of that software, and therefore the communications are copyrighted by Fasttrack. That is pretty far-fetched and slimey, though, IMHO. Even MPAA's lawyers in the 2600 case were on solider ground than that.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Although I doubt the FBI would arrest a member of the RIAA on a simple rumor of infringement from a small business, like they did with Dmitry, but its about time we started hitting them over the head with the very laws they use to hurt us. Encrypt EVERYTHING and copyright EVERYTHING from now on!
(c) Copyright 2001 by Caleb Mulford. All rights reserved
Ever wonder why cracking is about to be classified as "computer terrorism", yet you couldn't so much as get a cop to unplug one of those Code Red servers spamming you? Because it's not the crime that matters to the FBI, it's the damage. If the damage is billions of theoretical dollars of "lost" publisher revenue, or a scathing Newsweek expose on the rise of internet child pornographers, then you can get some FBI attention. If the crime is that somebody is misusing your little soundbite on Slashdot, you're not going to see squat in the way of enforcement.
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.
don't stop buying just buy INDIE artists. Then when RIAA members point to a slump, INDIE music can point to a growth...VOTE WITH YOUR DOLLARS, the RIAA understands NOTHING ELSE.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I'd like to help but I refuse to provide them the information they wish just to participate. Try and find a more politically suitable place to host and you might find more than 40 people willing to help.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Freenet is absolutely fantastic, except that it's not easily searchable.
My Journal
Many of these systems rely on dedicated servers to get people linked up - I remember at the start of this whole P2P thing, people would post chain lists of other running gnutella systems, etc - so that if a chain is broken, it was still able to get reconnected. This might happen again as this progresses...
What I wonder though is about the elimination of these servers...
Would it be possible for each "client/server" node to "broadcast" that it is available - and other "client/server" nodes could look for that broadcast? When I mean "broadcast", I mean in the traditional sense - a way of communicating far and wide "I'm here! I'm here!" without the need for centralized servers - the chains then established could morph, reorganise, and disconnect at will - appearing in an instant, vanishing in a puff of smoke - a true P2P solution.
I am sure such a system might cause routing and caching issues to appear - but it is something these kind of systems need. I am not sure what the broadcast would consist of, or where it would take place - maybe it would have to rely on some form of stego, or something else - how han we treat the internet as a true broadcast medium, similar to radio? Maybe participants would go into some kind of promiscuous mode on there ethernet card, analyzing packets, maybe?
In a way, the so called 802.11 freenets are like this - because they are based on a broadcast system of radio - is there a way a wired network can operate like this? Has it already been done? Does the Freenet project work like this?
Ideas?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
One of the interesting questions asked about the copyright debate surrounding p2p is that if it continues, how will the artist make money?
The apologists for the RIAA state that the only way to make money is to provide legal protection to the artists to guarantee their rights to a living. The interesting thing about special protection is that for every group that it descriminates in favor of, it also must descriminate in disfavor of everyone else.
The DMCA and bills currently before congress are examples of political rent seeking. The RIAA has found that its current model is threatened in a free economy, and that it can find favoritism through legislation giving it and its interest legal protection. It is, in fact, a much more economically efficient model for the RIAA than actually struggling through the tumult of a free market. However, it also violates the basic tenet of a free market: Competition is good.
In a free market economy, those industries that are most efficient in producing and providing goods and services tend to succeed, while those that are not tend to fail. This insures reasonable distribution and pricing. If there is demand for a product, a free market economy will tend to meet this demand, and at a reasonable price.
The RIAA realizes that they are not the most efficient means of distribution, and are not as competitive as other services. They are in the process of attempting to subvert the tenets of the free market to insure their continued existence. Their success will not be the first example of political rent seeking, but will provide precedent for future political rent seeking by other industries threatened by the changes of digital technology and the network age.
If there is a demand for music, people will create it. They will also find a way to make money on it. To attempt to delineate here the ways in which they might accomplish this a disservice to entreprenuers everywhere. I make no claims as to being the most imaginitive in the ways in which to make money in a free market economy. I have not made a fortune in business, so to lay claims as to having the answer would be questionable at best.
Money can be made on any product or service for which there is a demand. History shows us this. However, until competition and market forces are reestablished in the music industry, the incentive for solutions to be found are very very small. Why would capital and imigination be applied to an industry in which the RIAA has a government mandated protected interest? It is easier to make money elsewhere.
zor_prime
"We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking." -Mark Twain
You obviously never listen to college radio.. there are some decent college radio stations where they are not 'seeling' out to the riaa or promoters, they are playing what they like and have.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Assuming that you mean Arlington, Virginia, you're close enough to the Congress to have a never-ending supply of comedy already. In fact, if you hurry out to your garbage can you might be able to get Gary Condit's autograph.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
The RIAA has been working with Los Angeles-based network security solutions firm Vidius to study how peer-to-peer networks operate. The RIAA states in the memo that more information about how the FastTrack code utilizes supernodes, high-bandwidth computers that connect multiple "peers," is needed.
"Our claims would likely be strengthened by learning more about the designation of supernodes and the content of communications within the system. However, the encryption of this communication precludes further learning absent cooperation from one of these companies or court ordered discovery," the memo states.
I just find this beautifully ironic. Does anyone else?
Encryption is wonderful and illegal to crack - when it's the RIAA's encryption. It's a frustrating nuisance when it's employed by those evil hacker thieves. And apparently it's illegal to study the RIAA's code, but it's not circumvention to study FastTrack's. Please explain how THAT makes any sense at all.
Encryption's a bitch, guys, ain't it? How do you like THEM apples, eh? EH? =)
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger