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EFF To Defend Music Swapping Service MusicCity
MattW writes "Yahoo is carrying the CNET story that EFF has come to the defense of MusicCity, which produces peer-to-peer software, but does not run central servers as Napster did. EFF has a whitepaper on the Sony Betamax case, and it discusses the implications of various court decisions during the Napster case and their effect on it as a precedent. A MusicCity lawyer, who was responsible for the successful defense of the Rio, is quoted, astutely observing: 'This case shows more clearly (than Napster) that what the plaintiffs are most concerned about is control of technology. This is all about whether they can leverage copyrights into control over software development.' And that's truly what the RIAA's interest in Napster was about: not money, but control."
I'm not sure how much of a difference this is going to make. The EFF is great and all, but, frankly, they don't have much of a presence in Washington. Not compared to the MPAA, RIAA, and friends.
Still, Napster had one legal target; Peer to peer services have many. How are they going to stop these services? Especially open source ones? Seems to me that even if they "ban" or limit a given service, the legal ramifications are unlikely to extend to forks anyway. Change some comments and, violla! A new port!
The fact that there is no clear person responsible for the content of the services except the users themselves makes it difficult, as I said. They can't prosecute eighty thousand or more individuals. It's impossible.
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as a muscian, the only thing i worry about is not getting credit for my music. if people want to share it, go right ahead. if i happen to make some money as an after effect....right on. im just happy that there is someone with some clout speaking out about the fact that it really is control over technology. this sort of thing has to be nipped in the ass now before more legal precedents (ie dmca) are established.
"Alot of people don't know what they are doing...and most are pretty good at it." -George Carlin
I'm not sure why the "shell" company is the target of the suit. Wouldn't it be more productive to attack FastTrack directly? After all, they're the company selling the real technology. I suppose the American company is easier go after.
From a legal standpoint, if a piece of software is composed of many different components from different vendors, who do you hold accountable if they collectively create an "illegal" whole? Would Netscape or MS be held responsible if someone wrote a FastTrack plugin for their browser?
Is considerably at variance with the EFF's description of themselves. I'd say the EFF is closer to the truth. They represent all of us not just a minority that can be Reasonably And inconsequentially Discriminated against.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Keep in mind that a lot of small bands wouldn't be making much money anyway and that several small bands that I've spoken with praise song swapping as a way to distribute their stuff so that someday they can become a "big band" and then they can rest comfortably knowning that since they're brining in revenue the RIAA will protect them by making sure listners sign a form and pay a service fee everytime they listen to one of their new releases.
It's the college radio philosophy, and yes, it does work.
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if MusicCity had a different name like FileShareCountry. Their name says that they are in the business of sharing music and thus making illegal file sharing a likely part of their software business. It would be better if they were about the general business of sharing files.
Gnutella, although it's horribly inefficient, is just what you mentioned: Morpheus-like software that uses no central indexing server that can be shut down. The protocol is freely available and many open source clients exist.
The RIAA's approach to Gnutella thus far has been actively discovering copyright offenders and sending DMCA complaints to their ISP. The problem with Gnutella is that by design, everyone knows your IP.
What we really need, is a distributed storage network such as FreeNet. If I share my songs, the don't come from my computer - various parts of them are propagated to Bill's computer in Texas, Alice's computer in Canada, and Charlie's computer in Norway.. The RIAA is already having nightmares about this technology maturing. If software like this can become as efficient as Morpheus currently is, the RIAA's only hope would be SSSCA-type legislation that bans software such as FreeNet.
MusicCity, by serving up ads, is profiting from the piracy of content.
True but thats not what the RIAA is saying. MusicCity is making money off of adds, true. The largest use of the software is for piracy, true. But i belive that the RIAA is saying that they, MusicCity, would not survive without piracy, and should be shut down. Now thats where the slope starts to get slippery. Would they survive? And whos job is it to deal with the copyright infringement anyway?? Should MusicCity be shut down because it is an enabling technology??? ftp and http are enabling technologies as well, and firearms? who needs them.. someone could get shot! Where should the line be drawn for software? i tend to think it should be the same line.. and the RIAA will have to
"Shut up brain or ill stab you with a Q-tip" Homer Simpson
Why hasn't Morpheus been used to distribute new Linux distributions. The last time that Mandrake and Red Hat were release, I looked on Morpheus and could not find the current release... I had to fight along with everyone else to get to a ftp server that would let me download.
Once I downloaded the ISOs, I put it in my files directory for Morpheus, but didn't notice anyone downloading it...
It could speed up the downloads (and require less bandwidth from their servers) if Redhat/Mandrake would put the files out on Morpheus to get shared.
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
It is true that photocopiers are often used to illegally duplicate copyrighted material, but I have yet to hear of any court or government agency outlawing their use. Is this situation really that different?
The differences aren't huge, but they are there and worth nothing. [emphasis added]
Freudian slip?
I guarantee you that the RIAA and MPAA would like to have noncommercial defined as "you receive nothing of value."
Unfortunately, though Chapter 10 defines many of its terms, it doesn't define "noncommercial." If anyone knows of somewhere else withing the Copyright Act or any other portion of the USC, let me know.
IANAL, but I can read.
Why do they want control? So they can get money. Why do they want money? So they can get control. :)
In the long run, the people with control will get money. In the long run, the people with money will get control. However, as a famous economist once said "in the long run, we are all dead".
He who is controlled is a slave, and he who controls is a slavemaster. Those who seek to loose controls say they are fighting slavery. But what is slavery? If a man is hired, and receives nothing for his work, isn't that slavery? Those who seek to "loose controls" would have musicians receive no payment in exchange for recorded music. Isn't that the essence of slavery?
Currently, copyright is a part of the government. What if it weren't? Well then, people would enter into contracts that are very much like what we have now with copyright. People would have to agree to a license that would be printed on a CD, much as things are with software now.
It would be laissez-faire with IP law, much as it was with labor law in the 19th century. Now, labor laws were enacted when conditions were shown to be oppressive. The key law is minimum wage. Without minimum wage, it would be possible to create defacto slavery via debt as was often the case in "company towns".
Now, there are certain people who hate copyright and would like to see IP law abolished, but ask yourselves, what would we get? We would get a totally unregulated market, which might be good or bad. Notice, making music licenses illegal is not the same as abolishing IP law--that would be just another form of government regulation.
Let's say that we had the totally unregulated market. What would happen to the price of really popular music? What would the license stipulate? Would fair use be part of the contract? Most importantly, would the laissez-faire IP system become as oppressive as a 19th century coal mine? If so, what would be the remedy?
The obvious remedy is some form of government regulation, which we already have in the form of IP law because the founding fathers forsaw that *creators* would be enslaved without it. So yes, there is a battle for control here, but it's more about who will get the power to regulate. Will the Fashionable Left with its current distaste for IP get the power, or will the Right In A Panic Over New Technology get the power? Will The People even have a clue? Will the careful balance crafted over the years fall to pieces?
What do I do? I object to proposals from both the Left (mandates for Free Software in government as an example) and the Right (DMCA, SSSCA) and seek to return the system to a fair balance. I guess you could say that I am pasionately moderate when it comes to IP law.... which is a really strange position. It's hard to get people excited about balance but in the end, it's what makes good politics. We have all seen examples of what happens when people go too far to an extreme (Nazis, Communists, and most recently the Taliban). Given that, not only should it not be difficult to get excited about moderation, it should be a patriotic duty for citizens of every country--not just the USA.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The RIAA's approach to Gnutella thus far has been actively discovering copyright offenders and sending DMCA complaints to their ISP
I was a bit worried about this so I did some research. The only case of someone actually losing access was covered in an article on Salon. News.com reported about pressure on ISPs, but mentioned only one subscriber being cut off.
I checked the dslreports message boards expecting to find howls of protests by those cut off from their monopoly broadband providers. Silence....
I think the RIAA and MPAA are doing a great job at scaring people away from file sharing without actually paying many bounty hunters because the idea of a secret copyright police force is so juicy.
Similarly, there seems to be hysteria about people being denied boarding on aircraft for being dissidents. The Bangor, Maine Green Party member turns out to have been pretty uncooperative. Yes, the guard was an overbearing oaf, but she admits to provoking him in an interview . The Green's press release doesn't mention any of this.
The guy detained in Germany for having "unconventional" views and the guy denied flying for having a copy of Hayduke Lives look like the result of hysterical untrained guards, not a plot to deny everyone's civil rights. More hysteria won't help.
The guy who was harassed for taking pictures of National Guardsmen at a security checkpoint probably should have asked first (it's supposedly not illegal, but photography at customs is so he should have thought a bit), but he was another victim of a freakazoid with a chip on his shoulder.
I don't think we should have to turn into loyal plastic robots, but I'm not going to wear my Circumvention Device t-shirt through airport security. No need to get the wheels of teeny minds spinning.
There's certainly an epidemic of ineptitude (that's not new since Sept. 11), but I don't believe there's an epidemic of harrassment. Likewise of ISPs and their customers.