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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.
I mean, Mr. Fanning has a stake in this, and there's the Fair Use question, but Napster is DEAD. Supplanted. No longer important.
Writers imply. Readers infer.
Patel, who called both sides "dirty," said that Napster's misguided attempts to build a business using illegally obtained music paled in comparison to what could be massive misuse and heavy-handed tactics by the recording industry.
Please tell me that the future of digital music on the Internet is not being decided by someone who is arbitrating the decision based on which side is more morally repugnant.
What about applying old standards? Interpreting existing law to a new medium?
Patel has not impressed me with her keen wit and insight. Sorry.
Loneliness is a power that we possess to give or take away forever
"prove those copyrights were not used to monopolize and stifle the distribution of digital music"
I had problems understanding this phrase until I got to the second to last paragraph in the article:
"Napster lawyers have alleged the record industry withheld their copyrights from digital music services until three of the major labels could launch MusicNet. Once that service was launched, just days after Napster was shut down, company could only obtain wildly restrictive licenses to sell music. "
So THAT's what this is all about... The record industry isn't against digital music, they're against anyone besides themselves making use of it. If they had their way, I know of at least a few radio stations that would be shut down. Where does it end? Am I going to have to change to the Sony-owned radio channel to hear the latest music???
Why would the judge do this? Quite simply, the judge wanted the plaintiff to win, and wanted to keep the defendant from being able to appeal the decision. And if the judge sustained every single one of the defendant's objections, the defendant had no grounds for an appeal.
That is what appears to be happening here. Judge Patel, a jurist who has most decidedly taken the side of the plaintiffs in the Napster case, wants to make her decision airtight. There's no way that Napster will be able to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court if she allows the defendants to explore every possible line of defense before they lose the case. It's about giving them a fair trial and letting them prove they are not liable - and when they are unable to prove they aren't liable (they really are liable under the DMCA, like it or not), she will return the verdict that puts them out of business forever.
Not that Napster is an issue anymore, anyway. They have been supplanted by several services that are more resistant to legal and network attacks and do not attempt to extort a monthly fee out of their users for access to materials that they have a basic right to download anyway.
/fug
Throw off the shackles of copyright law.
In most cases, the copyright to a song is held by the person who wrote it, not by the record company. But, except for a couple of jerkwads like Metallica and Dr. Dre, no musicians have filed copyright complaints against file sharing services.
the article brings up some interesting points. although napster is currently pretty much dead in the water, it seems that the company may get some sort of compensation do to the anti-competative practices of the record lables.
"MusicNet did not suddenly appear full blown from the head of a fictitious entity. The evidence suggests that plaintiffs formed a joint venture to distribute digital music and simultaneously refused to enter into individual licenses with competitors, effectively requiring competitors to use MusicNet as their source for digital licensing."
granted, i am not a lawyer, but it would seem that napster would have some recourse if monopolistic/anit-competative practices could be proved, and napster may have a solid future (or others) in the pay-per-play area of online music...
-ryan
"In contrast, (the record labels') allegedly inequitable conduct is currently ongoing and the extent of the prospective harm is massive. If Napster is correct, plaintiffs are attempting the near monopolization of the digital distribution market. The resulting injury affects both Napster and the public interest."
At least Judge Patel sees that the RIAA is not actually acting in the interests of their artists, but in the interest of their wallets.
More interesting than proving that they own the songs (they may not own all of them, but they certainly owned some that were traded), was this quote:
"[The] plaintiffs are attempting the near monopolization of the digital distribution market. The resulting injury affects both Napster and the public interest."
I hadn't thought about it in terms of monopolizing means of digital distribution.
Anything you can do, I can do meta.
The Recording Industry setttled, to avoid having to do this very thing....that was brought up by the attorneys for MP3.com. This will mostly be the same scenario here as well. The case is somewhat moot anyway. BMG owns the majority equity stake in Napster as I understand it, so it would be in both parties interests to settle. Except for the fact that the DOJ is looking into anti-trust allegations of the RIAA and members. (collusion). Once the Recording Artists Coalition filed an amicus brief on behalf of Napster (and the RAC doesn't like Napster), I think that Judge Patel woke up. The artist who the RIAA claims to represent say the RIAA doesn't and can't because they don't own the copyrights.
I'm reading between the lines here, but this development in the Napster case seems to parallel something that recently occurred with online internet rebroadcasts of radio programs. These rebroadcasts were temporarily suspended because, for the most part, the contracts between the on-air talent did not allow for rebroadcasting (these contracts were written prior to streaming audio was developed). Essentially, the work of radio on-air talent was being rebroadcast without them getting paid for it.
This RIAA mess seems to be this: Not all artists have assigned their copyrights to the record labels. Some of these assignments may rather be in the form of licenses which do not extend to internet rebroadcasting rights. This, even if RIAA members may have the right to publish music, they may not necessarily have the right to rebroadcast that music on the internet. If they do not have that right, then Napster is not interfering with that right.
Of course this does not get rid of the whole case. There is certainly much music out there of which the copyrights are owned entirely by RIAA members, and the RIAA lawsuit would still be valid with respect to this music.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
- Most moderately talented and experienced 'hobby programmers' (like the guys who write open software for free), with some practice, can produce a piece of software just as good as commercial software, occasionally better.
- Professional quality compilers and development environments are available for free for all computer users.
- Many programmers give away their software for little or no money simply because they enjoy doing it.
Let me summarize in one statement: Programming should be a pasttime, not a career!.So.. why do we need software companies and paid programmers, again?
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
For those saying the artists own the copyright...it isn't that easy. The artists would like to, and should, own the copyright, but the record labels say they own the copyright (well, I'm sure there are some artists that manage to keep their rights).
Here is how it basically works: The artist is loaned money to cut an album. Artist's song goes to number 4 on the charts. Before artist sees a dime of the money, all the money "borrowed" for recording and marketing costs must be paid back. The label that picked up the artist now claims copyright to that recording (in most cases). And get this, the reason they say it is their recording and not the artists', is because they say they put up the money. When in reality, the artists have to pay back the money that the recording company LOANED them!
I work for someone that just wrote a somewhat popular country song. He said the record company owns the copyright for the recording of that song. The band that recorded it -- Perfect Stranger -- can perform the song live, record the concert and sell copies of that recording, go to another studio and re-record the song...but the copyright to the song that is being played on the radio does not belong to them.
Jay
Ron Paul
This is a HUGE blow to the music industry's case. The implication of Judge Patel asking them to produce copyright information is that, if they can't do it, the ENTIRE MUSIC INDUSTRY would be forever changed. Right now, music companies strap artists into super-restrictive contracts where anything the artist makes instantly becomes property of the label. This means that, perhaps, the power of ownership could fall back into the hands of the rightful owners - the artists. The RIAA knows this, and now they have to defend themselves. Ahh, sweet irony...
The other serious side effect of this is that the judge realizes that, like the article said, the music industry is moving into a monopoly of online digital music. We all know that the Napster law suit was raised not because the music industry doesn't want online transmission of music, but because they were late to the game and Napster beat them to the punch (and to the money). Judge Patel is calling their bluff and is saying that you can't shut down Napster just to steal their business.
This is a HUGE turning point to this case, and don't be surprised if the issue of copyright holding in music as a whole is revisited because of this line of inquiry.
taco
"Corrupting our youth one mind at a time"
To solve the problems associated with the net is simple. But it requires a major change in thinking, and would require an act of congress to pull off.
What are the problems with the net?
1. Bandwidth costs too much. The more popular your site is, the more it costs you to run. But being more popular doesn't mean you're making more money.
2. Copyrighted materials are easily distributed... but money is not easily collected for their use.
The solution is to make a drastic change to how the net works:
Instead of the provider of data paying for the price of the data being shipped across the net, the RECIPIENT pays the cost.
With this simple change users would bear the cost of the bandwidth they use. However for each individual user, this price would be small. One gigabyte of bandiwdth right now is between $2-$5. For most people their cost would be around $1-$2 a month extra on their ISP bill.
If this were implemented the following things would happen:
1. If you run a popular site, you would make money. The more popular your site the more money you make. Popular sites would be guaranteed existence forever. No more would a site you love be shut down because the site had become TOO popular but was not making money from ads or marchandise.
2. ISP's would pay YOU if you run a popular webpage, and would compete for users who run popular webpages... driving down the percentage they take from the content provider.
3. No more spyware. Spyware is generally created because it's how they finance free software. But with this system if you make free software and offer it for download, you still make money from it! No need to put in evil spyware which makes very little money anyhow.
4. An apparent downside is that there would be little incentive for companies to make their webpages smaller and more compact. However, there is a limit to what users will be willing to tolerate from a site, and sites which take less time to load and offer the same content will be more popular.
5. Free software would flourish.
6. Musicians who make songs available on their website would make money from said songs. Music trading services could compensate artists whose music is downloaded from them.
Some downsides would be:
1. Many artists would not want their content distributed on sites where they aren't receiving a royalty. The easiest and most fair way to deal with this without having to send money out to every artists if you host a site which distributes art is hyperlinking directly to an artist's images with thumbnails. Then the person providing the thumbnails gets some money and the artist gets the majority of the money from an image being distributed. Of course such distribution is going to happen regardless... but that's going on anyhow.
2. It might be more difficult to have anonymous speech. Anyonymous file sharing systems would have to be utilized to cover the trails of anonymous speech, because a direct money trail would be too easy to follow.
3. Copyright owners would be more likely to sue and be able to claim damages. Post a short clip of your favorite show, or a fan art or fan fiction, and you could be in some serious trouble. Fair use laws would need to be changed.
Still, the benefits far outweigh the bad issues.