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Napster Finally Gets a Break
jark writes "Wired News is reporting that 9th District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ruled that the five major record labels must prove they own thousands of music copyrights as well as prove those copyrights were not used to monopolize and stifle the distribution of digital music. " Definitely a twist
in this ongoing saga.
Napster is dead. Put a fork in it, it's done.
But what of Gnutella/BearShare/LimeWire? What of KaZaa (sp?) or mp3.com?
The pont is, if Patel finds that the 5 music companies have stifled legitimate competition, then other legitimate competition may return.
Sure, Napster is dead, but once a precedent is set, nothing's to stop someone else from setting up a clone service. Clearly, the demand is still out there.
But this would go as well for any other music sharing service. So, it's not really a failure in that regard. Also, it's a loss for RIAA, which is enough to make me raise my voice in song. Let'em try to take that away.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I am suprised that the blank media 'tax' already paid for the music being copied on Napster argument has not been raised.
Fight Spammers!
Actually, the judge seems to be basing her decision on sound legal principles. The sentence you qoute suggests otherwise, but it was written by the reporter at Wired. The quote about both sides being "dirty" probably refers to the doctrine of "Unclean Hands" which basically states that you can't benefit in a civil suit from illegal actions. In other words, if the record industry has illegally claimed copyright of songs that actually belong to artists, then they can't claim damages.
This is good news, but it is too late for Napster. The damage has been done to it, its effectiveness as a file sharing program has been taken away, and the users have moved on to other services such as Morhpeus, Kazaa, and Limewire. Fortunately, this next generation of file sharing programs is more decentralized, so even if the RIAA lobbies against them and sues them, there will be little they can do to stop them. Plus, Limewire and the Gnutella protocol are open source, so anyone could just take them and make changes in order to make them legal again if difficulties came up.
Once information is out there, there is no going back, and no removing that information. The public is thirsty for these file sharing programs and knowledge of them will prevent the companies from stopping them forever, and when they do stop them new ones will come out. Eventually, even their corporate lobbying will be in vain, and buying politicians won't do anything to stop the flow of information.
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It's dead and unimportant because Napster will never return in any significant way. It's limited material, pay only, audio only. It may be important in a historical, nostalgic sense, but not in a practical "I wonder what will happen next?" sort of way. It'll be just like MusicPlay, and that other industry owned fee-based service that nobody cares about when it opens up.
Possible criminal acts of the music industry are relevant as they are important to the continuation of the culture.
I noted a comment above that this is unimportant, because napster is dead, etc. Sort of like saying that murder is unimportant because the victim is dead and you can't bring the victim back.
Wrong. Unless you _like_ a world run by crooks, or are something of a crook or a criminal yourself.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
"The crux of Napster's copyright ownership argument revolves around a strange clause in copyright law called "works-for-hire," which essentially determines who owns the songs and albums. Any work of art -- in this case, music -- commissioned or created by an employee of a company becomes the property of that business. For example, reporters who work for newspapers don't own their stories."
Although not 100% legally accurate, the point is that the ownership of copyright for something you don't create is basically a function of contract law - i.e., the recording contract. Most companies who pay for the creation of IP (record companies, software companies, etc.) attempt to argue and contract themselves into a "work for hire" status - which means, essentially that they (the company) are the author in the eyes of the law.
However, work for hire, as the article states, is a doctrine that is controlled by statutory tests - simply saying something is a work for hire (even if the artist agrees to that in a contract) doesn't make it so.
So what if it isn't a work for hire? Traditionally contracts have a back up assignment of rights. The problem is when such an assignment does not cover rights that, for example, don't exist at the time the contract was written. Imagine a contract written in the 70's - it obviously isn't going to assign rights to digital distribution to the record company.
This comes into play in other industries - the publishing industry has recently had this problem with old author contracts where the author assigned all rights to publish a work "in book form" (standard language in older publishing agreements). Courts have found that electronic book rights still belong to the authors (or their estates).
Of course, the lawyers now use a simple addition to the assignment along the lines of "in all media whether now know or hereafter developed" to show that the assignment is everything now and in the future.
When you read articles about court decisions, you have to remember that a reporter is quoting the two or three juicy sentences in dozens of pages of dry legal text.
While Patel's logic, as quoted by Wired, might not impress you, you might want to check the full text of this decision.
This is especially true of Supreme Court decisions, which usually have hundreds of pages of decisions from the majority and individual justices. The press makes them look like a single issue decides the case, but that's almost never true.
Look past the flashy quotes, dude.
Teaching, coding, coffee, revolution.
Napster may have lost the battle for its own life, but they won the war in how they forwarded a simple idea that has largely become accepted by the masses:
In other words, if it's digital, it's free and swappable, whether legal or not. And nothing can stop this phenomenon. Nothing.
The pussy is outta the bag.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
This is because Metallica (through Creeping Death Music and E/M Ventures) actually own their own recordings, unlike most artists. I imagine Dre also owns his recent work (Death Row still owns his old material, IIRC).
Interestingly enough, Metallica never sued to get Napster shut down and have, afaik, refused to provide any sort of brief for the RIAA against Napster. I get the impression that they merely wanted to see their studio material kept off. They never even asked to have live bootlegs banned.
That's bullshit. Napster can add all the features of the decentralized networks (save for their distributed nature). Download from multiple sources would be a trivial hack. What advantage would Napster hold over, say KaZaA? One thing: speed and reliability. I'm on a reasonably fast connection here at UMass, and I rarely see/saw a rate with Gnutella or (before giFT was blocked) FastTrack that was even half of what my average Napster download was.
People will go back to Napster if it comes back like it did before (especially with features like bandwidth aggregation). With less hassle and faster speeds, I'd say it's a given.
Lets get a few things straight:
#1.) Most moderately talented and experienced 'hobby musicians' (like the guys who play at small local bars/clubs/restaurants), with some practice, can play any popular (cover) song live just as well as the original musician(s), occasionally better.
#2.) It is not hard to write good original music.
#3.) Professional quality home recording is a reality and is not cost prohibitive for the vast majority of the US population.
#4.) There is no shortage whatsoever of good to excellent musicians and singers.
#5.) The vast majority of musicians perform for little or no pay simply because they enjoy doing it.
Let me summarize in one statement: Music should be a pasttime, not a career!.
So.. why do we need record labels and celebrity performers, again?
I am not sure where you get your "facts" or your arrogant attitude, but the Napster case is most decidedly destined for the Supreme Court, not the Ninth Circuit as you have claimed. It is already in an appelate court; what would be gained by sending it to a court at the same level?
I wholehartedly agree with you that the DMCA is bad law, but the fact remains that there is little the courts can do about Napster's end of the case. In MPAA v. 2600, we had the First Amendment working for us; in this case there is no establishment clause issue and constitutional arguments will get us nowhere.
Throw off the shackles of copyright law.
I'm worried that those two things may be mutually exclusive. I don't think this case will provide anything more that the proof to support potential future recourse against anti-competitive practices. I don't think this case can give the labels the smackdown over their actions. I see it as either dead-in-the-water Napster achieves their proof of anti-competitive practices, but can't pursue if because of bankruptcy, or they get a fat cash settlement and a sweet (and undisclosed) licensing deal on the label's content in exchange for kiboshing the anti-competitive approach just before any real juicy details come to light.
In a related story, the IRS has recently ruled that the cost of Windows upgrades can NOT be deducted as a gambling loss.
"Someday, you're going to drive your Sony to the Sony to pick up some more Sony."
Napster "didn't rule out the possibility that the two sides would work out a settlement that allows the company to launch its legal service. "
They're perfectly willing to settle with the recording industry, which means they're perfectly willing to fuck the artists.
Why is the issue of copyright so hard to prove? pick up any cd you've purchased ( if you purchase cd's ) and look on the back. There it is in little text © Label Name, Inc. Isn't that proof enough?
Yep, and then if I take a copy and write on the back of the case © Anonymous Coward then I'll have proved that I own the copyright and if someone else makes a copy and writes on the back © something else then that'll prove that they own the copyright. Then we can all sue each other and all win because we all have a cast iron case.
Or to put it another way, NO of course claiming that you own the copyright doesn't prove that you do. How could it?