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Napster Calls MusicNet Monopolistic; Judge Agrees
MattW writes "Yahoo is carrying an article from the AP about a development in ongoing Napster litigation. Several major labels and RealNetworks formed MusicNet. Napster complained about an anti-competitive clause in the contract they signed with MusicNet, and Marilyn Hall Patel, best known to this community for her stern condemnation of Napster, agreed, stating that MusicNet had all the hallmarks of an anticompetitive business. The article goes on to state that, "If the recording industry was found to have misused its copyrighted material, it might not be able to successfully pursue an infringement claim on those works.""
What right does Napster have to complain about ANYTHING? It was a business built on piracy, and I'm sorry, but I'm falling out of my chair laughing on this one.
If the recording industry was found to have misused its copyright material, it might not be able to successfully pursue an infringement claim on those works.
That seems a pretty heavy statement. I wonder how much of it was reporter/editorial speculation and how much of this was actually discussed by the judge.
Considering the "BMG, Warner and EMI" are probably over 50% of the commercial music world already, a finding that they can't pursure copyright infringement claims could be monumental.
I'd mention them, but I'm sure people know what they are. And I don't want them catching any flak by my account.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
Well it looks like we will never be able to download music on the internet.
Hmm... I'm downloading music from the internet *right now* from a P2P filesharing service called USENET.
Steve Vai rocks, BTW...
Despite the best efforts of the RIAA to stamp out filesharing services, they have yet to seriously move against Usenet or convince any of the major ISP's to not carry the alt.binaries hierarchy. (I beleive Earthnet caved into the BSA and stopped carrying a lot of the alt.binaries.warez groups)
Moreover, many ISP's have started to refuse requests from entertainment companies to TOS users because they share copyrighted material. They cite issues such as DHCP IP addresses and non-provability, but what it really boils down to is the fact that the ISPs realized that they'll start losing customers if the becoming known for TOS'ing their users.
Sharing is alive and well, neighbor, and as long as its easier to share than it is to buy music, then the RIAA will just be spinning their wheels.
"The more you tighten your grip,
the more star systems will
slip through your fingers."
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Boycott all major label artists, even if you like them. Buy nothing that comes from an RIAA affiliated label and they will waste away. They survive and abuse you over and over again only because you collude with them by buying their product. Artists collude to be ripped off too by signing recording contracts with the illusions of stardom that the industry promotes to gather more slaves. Artists must revolt. Consumers must revolt. That's the only way to break the monopoly and free yourselves.
> This is good because IIRC RICO is a CRIMINAL
> action, and leaves the companies open to
> everything from fines to revocation of charters.
It allows for something else that I find delicious: Prison time for executives.
And the best part? You can end up in prison
because you are the highest level of authority
that "knew or should have known" about the violation.
That means you don't even have to have your manicured hands dirty to be escorted out of your
ivory tower in handcuffs. Even if you "don't know" about the corruption in your organization,
if the FBI can prove that you "should have known",
you're responsible.
I love RICO. OSHA is pretty good like this as well...
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
At the very end, the article says that the judge "said she may appoint a special master to examine all documentation, including artist contracts" (emphasis mine) before ruling.
Including artists contracts...
I find this very interesting. What's the latest on Courtney Love's suit against the record companies?
Aside from the (questionable) joy of explaining cryptography to suits and explaining licensing requirements to geeks (Harry Fox helps throw a real monkey wrench in there, administering rights for song-writers), one of the things that came up time and time again was anti-trust issues.
SMEI and WMG were well-aware that together they represented about 30% of the market (they split that up, flip-flopping every year over who has the most based on who had bigger hits). Their expectation was that a joint venture between them would attract BMG, Universal, EMI and whoever was number six at the time. Then independents would simply have to fish or cut bait and join up as well.
Everyone was very careful to avoid using words and phrases like "controlling", "domination", etc. at least in written materials. People would verbally joke that they needed to make sure those words weren't written down, in case they ever got subpoena'ed for anti-trust, but everyone knew that the objective was making the HBO of electronic music distribution. You see, they recognized that HBO had the movie companies by the short and curlies as far as cable distribution of films went, and didn't want the same to happen to them in a new media distribution - the film companies have been worrying about this for themselves for electronic distribution for a couple of years now.
Of course, Napster beat them to it, so they beat on Napster legally. One of the funniest things about the timing of these things for me was SDMI being announced just after MP3 hit the cover of Time Magazine, when I'd been working on it for years prior. And of course they got the DMCA passed in the meantime, making cracking even the stupidest of copy control schemes illegal. Of course, every crypto expert they talked to at the time (myself included) emphasized that no scheme was foolproof and you should be sure to design the system to minimize damage in the case of a crack. Being powerful executives with lobbyists on retainer, a legal solution was obvious.
So, all in all, I'm pleasantly amused that the music companies got just a bit too eager and slipped in one phrase too many.....
-----
Klactovedestene!
Sharing programs are legal. They may be held illegal now, but they can't be illegal, or Fair Use and our whole lifestyle is illegal.
I'll stick with the Constitution as it was established. Rich corps will buy laws forever, but: copyright should expire after 20 years, I should be able to copy and share media I own, and I should be able to make Fair Use of quotations and media clips.
The deal originally was that artists get copy rights for their work for a set period of time, in order to promote art and create content, in exchange for that period being limited, so that the artists' work would become part of the public life forever, enriching and advancing civilization.
If this deal is broken by assigning artists' rights to immortal corporations, and making the copyrights eternal, than I disregard the deal until my rights under the contract are restored. Anything else is slavery to the powerful.
Because that's the only contract that was offered to them? Because they were not in a position to negotiate different/better terms?
Why would any computer sign any of Microsoft's contracts just so they could put Windows on their computers? Why would they agree to Microsoft's terms?
Some more intresting tidbits about CD's:
Artist get less profit from them, because they are a "New" media
Artist get less profit, because the record lable withholds for breakage. A common occurance during shipping of LP's, but rarely now because CD's are much stronger.
Remeber the old packaging, like what costco still does? That was the most expensive part of the whole process, but they got Bono out to "save the trees" and made a comercial. Now CD Retailers have to purchase the resuable plastic ones, raseing the cost to consumers, while bulk CD prices dropped not one dime.
I don't dispute one bit that sharing programs are legal. The debate in my mind lies over the general use of the program. Previously I said, "...specific 'free music' programs are illegal."
That should have read something to the effect of,
"sharing programs that allow a disproportionate amount of piracy are illegal."
Think of it this way, you own a dance club on a college campus. That is a perfectly legal and legitamate business. However, your club becomes liable if it is being misused (copious illegal drug use/distribution or serving minors alcohol are good examples.) It's the responsibility of you, the owner to police such action and take appropriate measures.
Napster did not do this. While their foundation may have been completely legitamate, it was perverted into something else. It became a place where illegal activity was no longer the exception but became the rule. So bad in fact, preventative measures were not adequate as evidenced by the complete failure of their 'filtering system'.
Thus, in what was it's old incarnation, Napster is indeed an illegal file sharing program.
--I hate big sigs.
I was wondering about this a couple of years ago. However, I think I agree with The Register on this one.
Napster fans hoping this will get the company off the hook are likely to be disappointed. MusicNet is an independently run joint venture of three music companies - EMI, BMG and Warner - and RealNetworks. Well, independent of the labels, at any rate, but not of RealNetworks, whose CEO, Rob Glaser, is also acting CEO of MusicNet.
As such, it can be argued that the labels aren't responsible for the actions of MusicNet, and since they, not the distribution company, are the ones suing Napster, it's questionable how relevant the exclusive deal is to this case.
As a thought consider the following situation.
The individual songs, the lyrics, the music are the property of the recording artists - after all - they expended the energy, creativity, consumed the beer and pizza in order to write them.
Then time comes to record the music in an album. Essentially an album (CD, Tape, Vinyl, Whatever) is a combination of the music of the band, the lyrics, as well as the effort of the recording studio, the mixing, the physical production of the CD, the cover art, etc etc.
So you could well end up with a situation where the music is copyright to the artists (after all, they created it), however the assembly of the artists music into an album may well be copyright of the recording studio.
When I used to do some web sites for small businesses, I usually took the following approach (and there is a strong connection here - as the business didn't actually pay for the web sites).
The text, logos, information that the business provided I treated as the business having the copyright to - after all - they wrote it, or paid for the logos.
The actual HTML code, the websites were copyright of the organisation that I belonged to that made the code.
So, DIDN'T hold copyright over the information - but we DID hold copyright over the finished work.
So, the individual items are copyright one party.
The collected work could be copyright to a different party.
In reality - if we wanted to reuse the material - then we would need to negotiate for it - if they wanted to reuse our website - we would need to negotiate for it. It will most like come down to the contracts that are in use. (Read the fine print).
Standard Disclaimer: The closest I ever got to legal knowledge was sitting in one lecture, that I wasn't even enrolled in (IANAL).
See, copyrights are not granted to "protect" or benefit "owners". They're granted to increase the amount of useful sciences and arts which are available to the public. Ultimately, to increase the public domain. That's the justification behind them. _Not_ classical property law. Now, if a copyright holder does certain things to restrict the availability of their products to the public (and this includes things like price-fixing), then they are undermining the reason why we (i.e. The Govt.) give them special monopolies. If a monopoly is found to be abusive, then the govt. has the right to rescind it, break it up, slap it on the wrist, whatever.
The monopolists (RIAA) have a right to complain that Napster (as a file sharing company) is violating their monopoly.
But Napster (the would be fee-paying download site) also has the right to complain that the RIAA is abusing their powers.
No contradiction here. Just two different legal violations.
(btw, if your sense of laughter was sparked by the fact that Napster was found guilty and so has no rights to sue the RIAA for _anything_, then perhaps you should also have been laughing when the RIAA, which was previously found guilty of abusing it's monopoly (i.e. MAPS) and yet had the gall to sue Napster afterwards. There is plenty of dirty laundry to go around.)
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.