Greene's Grammy Speech Debunked

jonerik writes: "Today's New York Times has this article which debunks at least part of NARAS president Michael Greene's much-publicized speech at last week's Grammy Awards ceremony in which Greene claimed that he had hired three students to download a whopping 6,000 songs "from easily accessible Web sites" over two days. Leaving aside for a moment Greene's bizarre admission on national TV that he'd hired three students (at least one of whom, Numair Faraz, is a minor) to break the law (the No Electronic Theft Act), Faraz has been interviewed by the Times, saying that they spent more like three days on the project and that the other two students (both unnamed, though both are apparently attending U.C.L.A.) barely used P2P file-sharing programs at all. Instead, they used AOL's popular Instant Messenger to receive song files from friends."

Comments

Wow...

[punkball]

The lengths some people will go. Why don't I just hire some people to shot some other people to show guns are bad? Oh, because it's illegal..

Re:Wow...

[Publicus]

The lengths some people will go. Why don't I just hire some people to shot some other people to show guns are bad? Oh, because it's illegal..

Well, not only is murder illegal, but it's wrong. What the kids were doing, and what Greene did was illegal, but the catch, and the difference between murder and sharing music, is that sharing music isn't really wrong. That's why it wasn't so shocking to see a few college kids supposedly downloading a bunch of songs.

Re:Wow...

[MoneyT]

The way the RIAA tells it, it is wrong. Besides, as I understand it, illegal usualy implies wrong.

Re:Wow...

[Dyolf Knip]

Usually. Not always. The way things are going, most definitely not always. Go pick up one of those 'Dumb Laws' books that are so entertaining to see why.

What do you expect

[[AraGorn]]

They have to lie to make their points because the facts show that Napster, et all seem to have a positive effect for the most part on sales...

Re:What do you expect

[wurp]

If they accept that Napster improves sales, why the hell would they fight against it? It seems much more likely to me that they don't accept the facts themselves.

And... all of this AIM versus p2p stuff is a red herring. We shouldn't be arguing over how many files you can download in a certain period of time, or what mechanisms you use to do it. Our concept of intellectual property is broken, and they are pushing through laws that hurt the public good more and more deeply, while we quibble over what program was used to download files!

What we need to focus on is that they are doing things that reduce software reliability (SSSCA will do that), hurt people (snuffing our ability to copy will do that), and retard progress to protect an industry that is composed of trivial entertainment. Don't be distracted from the issues.

Re:What do you expect

[Dyolf Knip]

You can't prove that Napster caused sales to go up. Of course, the RIAA can't prove that it caused sales to go down, either. Which means it comes down to "Who has more lawyers?".

Re:What do you expect

[EDinWestLA]

If they accept that Napster improves sales, why the hell would they fight against it?

Because it would seem that people other than them (RIAA) would have the credit for having sales improved. It's all about the control of supply that they're after. They will choke down all competition in order to market to you what they want you to consume. Look at commercial radio. Even though the RIAA doesn't own directly commercial stations that play music, they are pretty much the only one's whose product ends up being played on them. Yeah, I know it's because they are the only ones that can afford the payola to do so, but still that gives you an idea of what goes on there.

Re:What do you expect

[RedAlert99]

NAPSTER HAS NOT BOOSTED MUSIC SALES! I know some people have been saying this, but it's not even close to true. There are two strong pieces of evidence for this:
1) The industry is struggling - they're having one of their worst years ever. They're doing much worse than... say... movie sales are. They're doing worse than most struggling industries in the economy. The sales of blank cd media now outpace the sales of published cd's.
2) As another posted below noted - If they thought it was helping them - they wouldn't be fighting it. This is just a fact of nature.

The correlation/causation problem is not what people think it is. Napster and comparable services have hurt the music industry (net sales) the whole time, but at first, their effect was smaller than the robust growth the industry was otherwise enjoying. Now that lots of people have burners, faster connections, etc... they are effectively stealing from the record labels, and hurting those businesses. This mistake was believing that somehow file sharing was *helping* the music industry.

I'm not saying all this because I support the record execs. Lord knows the music industry (especially radio) is F***'ed up. But my point is that we have to be more realistic about this. The simplest answer, once again, is the right one. If people can get music for free - they're not paying for it. All this is illegal. It was a fantasy to doubt this.

Andy

Re:What do you expect

[chartreuse]

Don't make the SPAlike assumption that all those CD blanks were used for copying copyrighted music. I use CD-Rs to make and back up my own music, as well as for other data backup.

accuracy with normal connection

[cliche]

im guessing that they were using some very high speed connection and that those numbers don't fairly represent how much music can really be downloaded.

Re:accuracy with normal connection

[crevette]

No seriously, how many of these song were downloaded from the same person? Gee, if someone asked me, they'd get over 2000 songs. The rest is a matter of bandwidth.

Too bad it's not 2000 *good* songs =(

Call the FBI.

[www.sorehands.com]

He broke the law by hiring people to break the law. The law apply to all, including him.

Easy to prove, he made an admission that was recorded and video taped.

Doesn't he want all music pirates convicted?

Re:Call the FBI.

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Nail him for "Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor"!!!!!

Re:Call the FBI.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not if he can show that he owns all the copyrights or had permission from the copyright holders.

I am sure that all the copyright holders (RIAA) will say that he was granted license before embarking on this mission.

Re:Call the FBI.

[Zach Garner]

Give 'em the Hemlock!!

Re:Call the FBI.

[joe90]

If some of that stuff crosses state lines, e.g. downloading from hosts not based in the state that the alleged crime was committed, under US law, doesn't that become somewhat more serious?

I could be wrong, but if multiple people are involved, could conspiracy charge(s) also be brought against the alleged perps?

Re:Call the FBI.

[curunir]

Maybe someone can correct my logic here...but it seems to me that the students didn't break the NETA.

Since they were hired by the Recording industry who holds all the copyrights in question, wouldn't they be stealing from themselves (on an organizational level)?

It seems analogous to hiring a hacker to try to crack your network. While his actions would be illegal if he was unaffiliated with you, by hiring him, you've legitimized his actions which would otherwise have been illegal.

but IANAL...so there's a lot that's illegal these days that makes no sense to me.

Re:Call the FBI.

[poot_rootbeer]

Since they were hired by the Recording industry who holds all the copyrights in question, wouldn't they be stealing from themselves (on an organizational level)?

Despite what the RIAA would have you believe, the RIAA-affiliated companies do NOT hold the copyright to every MP3 that found its way onto the internet. I've got MP3's of music I wrote, recorded and encoded myself on my site, for example.

For those that are held by the RIAA -- common sense says that you can't steal something from yourself, but when has copyright law ever used common sense? Viz the lawsuits where a musician is sued by the copyright holder of some of their previous works, because the musician wrote a new song that sounds TOO MUCH LIKE THEMSELVES.

Re:Call the FBI.

[fishebulb]

except you wouldnt be a copyright holder of any of the songs they downloaded. Every song produced is now owned by the Record label once that contract is entered. its considered work for hire. (RIAA land atleast) They own it, they do what they want with it regardless of the artist's opinion

Re:Call the FBI.

[Exedore]

Hey, back off, dude. It's their law, they bought it, and they can break it if they want to!

Re:Call the FBI.

[seann]

what if they downloaded "Seanns sexy sounds" that was part of his "sexy buisness" to play at his "Sexy parties" which he owns the sexy copyright too.

Re:Call the FBI.

[SydShamino]

He didn't break the law. Fair use allows for the copying of copyrighted works for research purposes. Assuming that the kids didn't keep the 6000 songs, it was all "research".

That being said, he's still an idiot. What if the kids did listen to the songs, because they were "researching" bands to find the one whose CD they should buy.

Re:Call the FBI.

[Phroggy]

Since they were hired by the Recording industry who holds all the copyrights in question, wouldn't they be stealing from themselves (on an organizational level)?

The RIAA doesn't hold the copyrights. The RIAA is, as its name implies, an association of different companies. Unless he was explicitly (in writing) granted by the copyright holders the authority to do this, or the authority to do this sort of thing is automatically granted by the wording of whatever membership agreement the copyright holder signs when they join the RIAA, then yes, he has broken the law.

IANAL, but I'd imagine the copyright holders would have to prosecute the individuals who actually downloaded the music, since it was their copyrights that were violated - however, the act of paying somebody to do something illegal could be prosecuted by the government without the involvement of the copyright holders.

Re:Call the FBI.

[SirGeek]

He didn't break the law. Fair use allows for the copying of copyrighted works for research purposes. Assuming that the kids didn't keep the 6000 songs, it was all "research".

Since when does fair use enter this ? This law's (and the related ones) are for the purpose of removing or severly limiting fair use rights to the point where you have NONE... (Why do you think they want self destructing mp3's that expire in a set time period ?)

Re:Call the FBI.

[MAXOMENOS]

He didn't break the law. Fair use allows for the copying of copyrighted works for research purposes. Assuming that the kids didn't keep the 6000 songs, it was all "research".

If you're right, then I want a judge to say you're right. Otherwise, I want that criminal hacker music pirate bastard nailed to the goddamn wall for stealing intellectual property and stealing the food out of artists' mouths.

Re:Call the FBI.

[_Bean_]

WON'T SOMEBOBY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!

stupid lameness filter. Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. THAT'S THE FUCKING POINT.

Re:Call the FBI.

[clone304]

Whatever, he's just enjoying the freedom of fair use. There's no reason to take him or his henchmen to jail. You see, on a percentage basis, most of the songs that were downloaded are likely copyrighted by RIAA member organizations, so it's as if he has bought all of those CD's and is downloading them merely to avoid the time consuming job of ripping them directly from CD. The small percentage of songs that member companies don't own the copyright to don't matter, because he's the CEO of the Grammy Awards. Taking him to court over each specific violated copyright would just be a "waste" of taxpayer money in court expenses. Because he's "important" he's allowed this sloppy mathematical perspective on the subject, whereas an unimportant average CITIZEN would likely have to answer to each specific charge from each specific copyright holder.

Sarcasm and cynicism aside, how is this really any different than a documentary in which marijuana growers openly admit to growing the shit and take the press on a tour of their operation. Somehow, these "criminals" get away with blatantly public exposure of their crimes, why shouldn't an idiot like this guy get away with it?

Re:Call the FBI.

[clone304]

As much as I may like to agree with you, unfortunately, it is my responsibility to inform you that nobody gives a flying fuck what YOU want.

Sorry, I just pulled the cosmic lottery ticket and the duty fell to me. No hard feelings, I act like a jackass, at times, myself. I'm sure you'll catch me saying something irrelevant and stupid within a week or two.

Cheers.

.

6000 WOW

[DCram]

That is alot of pipe for 2 days worth of downloads. 6000 x ~3.5megs per song = ~21000megs of download. I don't think that this was accomplished on a 56k modem.

I believe it is in bad taist to plug your agenda at an event like this.

I think I will go home tonight and "Hire" 3 friends of mine to download a hack of starcraft and play all night.

Re:6000 WOW

[Com2Kid]

Bah, if you have an account on a nice privet FTP, 300KBp/s per download 2 downloads at once. . . .

VERY doable. I am surprised that three people were required. :)

Re:6000 WOW

[Isca]

How many of those downloads were the same Britney Spears song though?

Re:6000 WOW

[Asetilean]

This is actually quite easy to debunk:

6000 mp3's @ approx. 3.5 - 4 mb per song / 3 Students for two days (48 hrs)

(6000 * 3.5 * 1024)/(3 * 48 * 60^2) = kB/s

Sustained data rates between 41 and 47 kB per second would be required to support the claim.

Now, most of these "easily accessible Web sites" wouldn't sustain those rates to an individual user. And P2P definitely never gets close. The only real way to get that much data would be from other computers on the campus LAN not said web sites.

So, now we know he lied in his speech apart from his ridiculus extrapolation to millions of students (when was the last time you skipped a month's worth of classes just so you could download all that pirate music?)

My question is, why can't the broadcast media crunch these simple numbers and figure out that this guy is full of sh*t?

Re:6000 WOW

[The MoMo King]

I've had some heavy pr0n downloading sprees ... so anything is possible.

Re:6000 WOW

[scseth]

Who cares about 56K.. He said they were "college students" so I would assume they have at least 10mb ethernet to their dorms, right?

Re:6000 WOW

[jgerman]

Don't forget to add in time to find the song, unless they just kept downloading the same song over and over.

Re:6000 WOW

[jazman_777]

That is alot of pipe for 2 days worth of downloads. 6000 x ~3.5megs per song = ~21000megs of download. I don't think that this was accomplished on a 56k modem.

Even now, their ISP sysadmin is grumbling, "friggin' bandwidth hog, let's put a cap on 'im" as he limits them to 128 Kbps...well, I can dream, can't I?

Re:6000 WOW

[L-Train8]

Not only the bandwidth, but that's 7 songs per month for every person in the world with internet access. That's a lot of music. I know a lot of people who aren't pulling their weight, illegal-download-wise, so the worst offenders must do nothing but steal music 24/7. Common sense says that number is garbage. But Mr. Greene prefaces the statistic by saying, "The RIAA estimates..." He might as well have said, "The RIAA made up this number to shock people into letting us get bad legislation passed..."

Re:6000 WOW

[martissimo]

what if they were getting sustained rates of even only 20 KB/s but had 5 or 6 downloads going concurrently though at thoose speeds, it's certainly not impossible if you ask me

Re:6000 WOW

[mlk]

Only by default, all pop songs are the same.

Re:6000 WOW

[ackthpt]

Who cares about 56K.. He said they were "college students" so I would assume they have at least 10mb ethernet to their dorms, right?

Certainly, so the method of how to prevent this kind of activity could be, in the spirit of Greene's speech, any of the following:

Pass SSSCA and bloat all hardware and software with copyright kludges

College students all banned from having computers in dorms

College students all banned from having T1/ethernet/phone lines in rooms

Make using the internet illegal, since it's too hard to control

College students all banned from living in housing, make 'em live in the bushes

Ban all music, since it only encourages theft

Ban all colleges since they teach students to think

Ban all thinking, just do what your leaders tell you

Prohibit gatherings of 3 or more people, as this constitutes a conspiracy

I could go on, but the reality is some or all of these are actually in place in countries considered "less free" and we all know where the RIAA and MPAA want to take us tomorrow.

Re:6000 WOW

[mother_superius]

Plus they might have slept, ate, or even gone into the outside world!

Re:6000 WOW

[MoneyT]

You might like this link:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

Re:6000 WOW

[clone304]

I know this is offtopic, but I just can't help myself. The whole event is in bad taste. How many times a year do "artists" have to dress up in expensive gowns and give themselves meaningless awards. When was the last time a celebrity whore took time out to recognize your contributions to society? Uhh, never. Yet, you likely perform a valuable function within our society. The fact that these people can't just make some music and get the fuck over it is digusting to me. So, in closing, it was not in "bad taist" (your spelling) for this clone/whore to "plug his agenda" at an event like that. In fact, it was completely appropriate given the vile and disgusting nature of the event itself. For example, is it bad form for a dog to fuck when it's in heat? No. It's entirely natural. Should I care about it, or sit there watching it with rapt attention? Hell, no. I don't want to see two dogs fucking. And I don't want to see the Grammy Awards (or any of the other fifty-some-odd awards shows these whores use to pat themselves on the back).

Blah.

.

AIM isn't P2P?

[JayAndSilentBob]

Is not AIM P2P when two users are "directly connected" as when they are transfering files, pictures, or just typing to each other? If not then what are they directly connected to? I was under the impression that if I was directly connected to someone and the AOL servers ceased to exist, I could continue my conversation with them until one of us severed the link.

Re:AIM isn't P2P?

[chaidawg]

Thats not the point. The point is that AIM utilizes a buddy list that the user must put together. By deffinition your buddy list is a list of friends, whether is is or not. Therefore, trading over AIM could still fall under the fair use clause because it is not opening up the files to millions of people you do not know.

Re:AIM isn't P2P?

[CounterZer0]

No, it's all done thru the servers - everything, that's why people have such trouble with the 'alternative' clients.

Re:AIM isn't P2P?

[SirSlud]

It's not p2p (misnomer in this use ANYHOW, but what the hell) because you are not searching for content based on content. You are hooking up with someone who can offer you something *only after you connect with them*.

p2p, in popular use terms, is more of a 'file search and retrieve' platform rather than a 'find your friends and then share the files you have with them'. Can you use AIM to search for files?

Re:AIM isn't P2P?

[Eppie]

You're connected to a central AOL server. Your IM goes from your box to AOL to your messaging partner. His or her messages come back by the reverse route. If AOL goes down, so does your conversation. This is why AOL could (given lots of resources) read AIM traffic, something it claims not to do (I actually believe them on this one).

Re:AIM isn't P2P?

[doooras]

the direct connection is not done through the servers. because of this, you are still able to communicate, transfer files, or whatever to the person you are connected to even after you disconnect from the AIM service.

Re:AIM isn't P2P?

[ethereal]

I don't see how sharing MP3s with your friends is any more legit than sharing them with the world, at least in the eyes of the law. There's no fair use exception for "but he's my best buddy, officer", is there?

Re:AIM isn't P2P?

[Carlos Laviola]

You're saying apples, and he's saying bananas. You probably know that most of the rare stuff that you look for on P2P applications isn't found with your friends, because it is rare. Plus, if you only download and upload to your friends, you'll have a pretty small database, opposed to the giant database that Napster carried at it's peak.

Re:AIM isn't P2P?

[peter hoffman]

A couple of decades ago when the recording industry "won" the right to collect a tax on all blank audio cassettes one of the concessions they made was to allow people to share recordings with friends.

The logic was that if you were presumed to be making illegal copies and were paying for that in advance, then you ought to be allowed to make a few copies. The industry apparently figured they could tolerate that as the analog nature of the recordings would keep people from making copies of copies of copies.

Now that people can make unlimited perfect digital copies and share them with anonymous "friends" thousands of miles away all bets seem to be off.

As far as I can tell, that right to make copies has been removed from the U.S. Code as part of the DMCA.

Re:AIM isn't P2P?

[ethereal]

I looked through Title 17, and although it does appear that the Audio Home Recording Act changed section 1008 to block action against someone for making a noncommercial recording, it doesn't appear to indemnify the average consumer for copyright infringement from sharing such a recording. It's true that the AHRA included royalty payments for some media and equipment, supposedly to make up for the copying that would go on once such devices and media exist. But I see nowhere in the law that it says that this allows such copies to be distributed. (Although maybe I'm not seeing such statements because they were removed by the DMCA?)

I understand that the sharing argument is the popular opinion of the law, and I'd like to find the legalism that actually proves this to be the case. But as far as I can tell based on my searches so far, the AHRA only allows you to make a tape for yourself; it doesn't allow you to share it around.

Re:AIM isn't P2P?

[peter hoffman]

You are quite right that the right to share copies of recordings seems to have vanished from Title 17. I think I may have been mistaken to think that's where I read about it although I'm not at all certain.

I have since found what I might have been remembering in Title 17 Section 506 which defines Criminal Infringement. My take on it is that if (1) you don't sell the infringed material and (2) you infringe on less than $1000 worth of materials each 180 days then you are not guilty of criminal infringement. Also, evidence of reproduction or distribution of copyrighted material is not sufficient to establish willful infringement.

I admit I do find this section a little puzzling and probably worthy of more investigation.

Re:AIM isn't P2P?

[ethereal]

Ah, now that makes more sense - some of that wording does sound familiar now that I think about it. So I could see where that part of the law would give such an impression.

news?

[edrugtrader]

3 college students download songs off the internet... call CNN, make sure /. is notified!!

Nice

[DutchSter]

Nice to know, not only did he hire people to break the law he hired minors to do so. Excellent, courts sometimes overlook the piddly petty-theft stuff but "Corruption of a minor" is hardly looked upon lightly almost anywhere. Or are we going to be told that he had been licensed by the individual copyright holders to do the downloads?

What's the number on all the Microsoft CD's? 1-800-IS-Legit? I wonder if RIAA has one too :P

Re:Nice

[DevNull Ogre]

Excellent, courts sometimes overlook the piddly petty-theft stuff but "Corruption of a minor" is hardly looked upon lightly almost anywhere.

Get the hemlock! ;-)

Re:Nice

[bofkentucky]

Yeah, In KY, if you buy beer for a 20yr old or a 10 yr old its the same charge, gotta love the bible belt.

life and death issue??

[hex1848]

Did anyone listen to the speech?

This problem won't be solved in short order. It's going to require education, leadership from Washington and true diligence to help our fans - that would be you - to embrace this life and death issue and support our artistic community by only downloading your music from legal Web sites

How can anyone compare death to music piracy with a straight face? Needless to say I turned the channel and stopped watching the shortly there after. The little respect that I had for the Grammies was lost that night. I think it pissed me off more that no one booed him off stage.

Re:life and death issue??

[Anonymous Coward]

How can anyone compare death to music piracy with a straight face?

The same way you can compare copyright infringement to piracy. Piracy does cause death, but copyright infringement is not piracy.

Re:life and death issue??

[corbettw]

"How can anyone compare death to music piracy with a straight face? "

Of course it's life or death! Don't you remember when Kid Rock starved to death because of MP3s?

Re:life and death issue??

[alwayslurking]

brings to mind this story Kid Rock Starves to Death

Re:life and death issue??

[Gogo Dodo]

Greene isn't exactly on everybody's top friend list. He's clashed with a variety of people and been sued a couple of times. Here's a CNN article about this troubles

Re:life and death issue??

[JordoCrouse]

I think it pissed me off more that no one booed him off stage.

He could have defiled a young maiden on stage, and nobody would have booed him off. Sadly, the President/CEO of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences has way too many of the people in the audience that night by the short and curlies.

Re:life and death issue??

[Thud457]

"this is a life and death issue"


These weenies don't know from real pirates. real pirates shoot and kill people and take their physical property.

A long sight different than some kid who makes a copy of a song.

I think it's a shame that the word " pirate " has been so trivialized. Sort of like happened when the media started using the term "hacker".

Re:life and death issue??

[Graspee_Leemoor]

If I had been there I would have shouted very loudly:

"minus one, troll!"

graspee

Re:life and death issue??

[Funk_dat69]

I'm not sure I understand your comment...or are you talking about "Arrg" pirates that roam the seven seas with parrots and drink bottles of rum.

Those damn scallywags and their murderous ways most deffinitely DO cause deaths.

Re:life and death issue??

[rizzo420]

ARRRRRRRR, me matey!!! shiver me timbers!!!

Re:life and death issue??

[NME]

It's life and death for his career!
And the careers of so many leeches and remoras like him.

duh.

-nme!

Re:life and death issue??

[SmittyTheBold]

Not really any booing, but the crowd erupted in cheering when he mentioned how much music the three students were able to dowload...so you can tell a lot of the audience didn't really agree with what he was saying.

Re:life and death issue??

[nelsonal]

What i find ironic is that I recall a BSA article in which someone there decried calling copyright violators pirates, because it brought up romantic swashbuckling images.

Re:life and death issue??

[mtnharo]

I dunno, i think flamebait is more appropriate.

Re:life and death issue??

[Zanth_]

Tonight was the first night I replied to a funny post....who would have though two in the same night in the same thread? Damn man...I nearly wet myself! Congrats on making my night worth reading slashdot!

Re:life and death issue??

[Fesh]

The same thing is in the process of happening for the word "terrorist"... Which is as much of a damned shame as the misuse of "pirate".

I must be slacking...

[magic]

I don't have nearly 6,000 MP3's.

Maybe I have the wrong IM friends. Hey... I wonder if those UCLA students are still for hire!

-magic

Re:I must be slacking...

[Danse]

Hmm. I've only got just over 2,500 songs. I need to find a decent Gnutella client. So far the best I've found (that doesn't install spyware) is Gnotella. Unfortunately it's quite buggy and *always* crashes after a few hours of use. I've tried Gnucleus too, but I couldn't get a decent connection to any servers or find much of anything with that one. Guess I'll have to keep looking.

Re:I must be slacking...

[kerrbear]

I don't have nearly 6,000 MP3's.

You are assuming the students downloaded 6000 different songs. All they really did was download Brittiny Spears' Oops...I did it again 6000 times.

6000 songs?

[Jonny Balls]

they aint got nothing It doesn't take more than one person and a hig-speed connection to get 6000 songs in 2 days gimme a T1 line... 24 hours... and some caffeine... i'll get you anything you need

Re:6000 songs?

[Stonehand]

But... through instant messages?

Good god. Unless those are highly automatable (e.g. select a BUNCH of files to send via AIM with a shift-click or similar mechanism; I've never used AIM, so I wouldn't know how their file transfer system works), the sheer *pain* of doing that -- eek.

You'd think that if Greene 'specially asked for *web* downloads, that they'd write some script to use the search engines and grab anything that looked like an .mp3 or .ogg (if that's the typical extension for Ogg Vorbis) URL.

Re:6000 songs?

[thesolo]

Unless those are highly automatable (e.g. select a BUNCH of files to send via AIM with a shift-click or similar mechanism; I've never used AIM, so I wouldn't know how their file transfer system works), the sheer *pain* of doing that -- eek.

FYI, using the OSCAR version of AIM (not TOC, which doesn't support file transfer), you can select entire directories to send to someone. Say you have all your MP3s on a Windows machine at c:\music. If you type in c:\music\ into the AIM file transfer window, it will send c:\music\*.* recursively to the other person. Sending 4000 files this way would be VERY, VERY easy, especially on a LAN.

Also, there is a Get List function, which grabs a list of all the files a person has available to share. (By default installed to c:\filelib) Provided the person allows lists to be grabbed from them, once you have the list, you can download anything off of it.

Lastly, yes, .ogg is the extension for Ogg Vorbis files.

Re:6000 songs?

[Stonehand]

Ah, that makes more sense than requiring thousands of clicks. Danke.

FUD

[mini me]

I found that speech rather humourous.

First off he said that downloading music is a bad thing. Then in the next breath he incuraged everyone to download music from RIAA approved web sites.

Second. Who uses the www to download music anyway? It's all FTP or the various P2P services. The only exceptions that I've seen is music that has already be approved for download. MP3.com is an example of that.

Third. My guess is that MP3.com would have 6000 MP3s avaliable. All you would need is wget and a small shell script to download all the songs automatically. Keep in mind that there is legally nothing wrong with downloading music from there.

I find it pretty sad that they had to go to all of the trouble of writing that speech just to try and sway the public away from downloading online audio. Was downloading the 6000 songs trying to prove a point? It just sounds to me like they were breaking their own laws. If it is okay for them to do it why can't I? The RIAA knows their current role is coming to an end and they fear this. The truth is, is that they will not become obsolete, their role will only change.

So it's whose fault?

[Len]

"...barely used P2P file-sharing programs at all. Instead, they used AOL's popular Instant Messenger to receive song files from friends."

So the record companies should sue AOL Time Warner! Um...

What did you expect?

[TheSHAD0W]

Mr. Greene doesn't want anyone sharing music with their friends either. Or putting them on their hard drives, or uploading them to their MP3 players, or burning them onto blank CDs... All of these actions kill potential revenue, and no matter how it inconveniences the average listener, he'll push for anything that'll protect the bottom line.

Re:What did you expect?

[NavySpy]

What do I expect? I expect that people will obey the law and respect intellectual property rights, that's what _I_ expect.

Odd connections in the mind

[Violet Null]

In a way, this reminds me of the "airline safety" brouhaha after 9/11. No, no, I'm serious. Think about it:

Greene claims that P2P programs are bad, and that thievery is easy, backed up by the 6,000 songs they got. Then it comes out that they weren't really using P2P programs at all, but doing something covered (legally) by fair use.

Post 9/11, there was a need for more airline security and an outcry over the pisspoor airline security that was in place at the time...and then it comes out that the hijackers used boxcutters, which were legal to take onto airplanes at the time.

Re:Odd connections in the mind

[edrugtrader]

ok... continue this train of thought out now...

because the box cutters were determined to be weapons, now i can't bring a razor, toe nail clippers or a myriad of other items on planes...

apply this to his train of though, and the "easily accessible" web sites need to be stopped... so we are forced to shut down the internet. totally irrational thinking.

back to planes... i flew 2 weeks ago and had a mach 3 razor in my backpack and they acted like i just raped nun... later i the plane i notice the lady in front of me is knitting. to those of you who don't have grandmas, knitting needs are about a foot long huge needles. back to the music industry, WHATEVER they do to try to stop music distribution, an old lady with knitting needles will always get through.

Re:Odd connections in the mind

[ethereal]

To carry along the analogy, we've now prohibited nail clippers on aircraft, even though you couldn't (especially nowadays) take over an airplane with them.

And some misguided souls are considering prohibiting general-purpose computers to stop music sharing - again throwing the baby, the sink, and the nanny out with the bath water.

Re:Odd connections in the mind

[egomaniac]

Then it comes out that they weren't really using P2P programs at all, but doing something covered (legally) by fair use.

Since when is this covered by fair use? Let's have a look at the relevant section of Title 17:

US Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 107

Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

Funny, while it mentions news reporting, research, and things of that nature, I don't see anything in there about "sharing with your buddies". Sending people songs over AIM is *not* considered fair use. You can certainly argue that the law should be changed, but you at least need to know what the law says.

(Note that I am not saying anything regarding the speech, or the college kids downloading mp3's. I am merely correcting a significant misunderstanding of copyright law.)

Re:Odd connections in the mind

[SydShamino]

What if you are researching which band's CD you want to buy next?

Re:Odd connections in the mind

[GSloop]

Well, the RIAA doesn't seem to care about sharing tapes. Ok, you'll say...Oh, that's digital, and that's different. Sure, it is a little. But not by too much.

As for sharing songs via AIM, it's probably take a judge to review what's fair use and what's not. In the case this article is about, it probably isn't. When you share a few songs with someone you know, it probably isn't. But you probably already knew that.

Notice that your citation isn't all inclusive. It's just a list of things that PROBABLY are fair use. but even then, might not be.

Cheers!

Re:Odd connections in the mind

[Bob McCown]

later i the plane i notice the lady in front of me is knitting. to those of you who don't have grandmas, knitting needs are about a foot long huge needles. back to the music industry, WHATEVER they do to try to stop music distribution, an old lady with knitting needles will always get through

Good lord, that lady needs to be stopped, she might knit an Afghan!

Re:Odd connections in the mind

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

It's people like you what cause unrest...

Re:Odd connections in the mind

[tkrotchko]

"apply this to his train of though, and the "easily accessible" web sites need to be stopped... so we are forced to shut down the internet. totally irrational thinking."

I've said essentially the same thing before.

Within 18 months, I predict someone in congress will suggest that web sites must be licensed the same way radio stations are licensed.

It won't be because of copyright infringement, rather, it will be because of some other pretext, but the results will be the same.

He doesn't get it

[billmaly]

Simply shows that most execs simply don't get it....when they try to explain what they've done, they screw it up, and look stupid. They read somewhere that product X is bad, and jump on the bandwagon to protect "share holder interests", and forget the details in the dust. Man I hate suits.

Criminal law and copyright...

[roybadami]

Interesting that in the US copyright infringement can now be a criminal offense (rather than a civil matter) even when it's not for commercial gain. How recent is the No Electronic Theft Act? -- I don't recall having seen any coverage of it on the web, but maybe I missed it...

Anyone know whether similar things are happening (have happened?) in the UK/EU ?

Re:Criminal law and copyright...

[QuantumG]

On December 16, 1997, President Clinton signed HR 2265 -- the 'No Electronic Theft' Act -- into law. The act, sponsored by Representative Goodlatte (R-Virginia), was passed in the House on 11/4/97 and in the Senate on 11/13/97.

Use the google luke. from here. As far as I know the US is the only country on earth that has criminalized copyright violation. Land of the free.

Re:Criminal law and copyright...

[roybadami]

As far as I know the US is the only country on earth that has criminalized copyright violation. Land of the free.

At the risk of stating what you already know...

The US is certainly not the only country to have criminal copyright law. The UK has long made it a criminal offense to profit from copyright infrigement... The significance is not that there is criminal copyright law; the significance is the extension of its scope

Re:Criminal law and copyright...

[QuantumG]

yer sorry, non profit copyright violation. I generally dont go around trying to sell everything I can get my hands on so I forget to clarify things like that.

I say, let him go.

[Daunting*Alligheri]

Let Greene whine,bitch and moan all he wants. Let him admit he's breaking the law. Especially on television. The more vocal these folks become, the more likely we can use their words against them.

If Mr. Eisner, and Mr. Greene are hellbent on alienating their consumer base, let them have at it. Its still relatively isolated on the net as it stands, but soon, they're going to get cocky (I'd argue they already are) and start frothing at the mouth on public TV. Give audiences (and artists) enough of this, and the ensuing hatemail/flames and public outcry, and I think we'll see a marked change in the view that consumer=evil pirate.

Until then, Mr. Greene provides a vast ammount of entertainment, and I can just avoid watching his programs, and contributing to his cash flow.

More Hype

[beens]

This looks like another attempt at hyping the public from a long list of people for whom it's financially helpful to do so. The RIAA is constantly throwing about ridiculous numbers about how the internet is driving them out of business. But the past year brought them more box office sales than any other year in history!

Media Executives need to wake up and realize that stirring up controversy where none should be had is simply going to come back and bite them later. Why not show us the real story from the get go?

Re:More Hype

[beens]

Right - sorry. Meant the MPAA. Too many damn acronyms to keep up with

Breakin' tha Law? hardly....

[tomdarch]

When you paid for the law, you get to say when it should be enforced. Thus the RIAA can hire minors to 'steal' music and declare that the law won't apply.

You think that's bad?!

[chrysrobyn]

You think that's bad? Just the other day, my wife downloaded 5 gigs of songs in under a half hour! Talk about thinking you know someone!

Re:You think that's bad?!

[WildBeast]

good God what kind of connection do you have? T1?

Re:You think that's bad?!

[Elentar]

Picking an average song length from nowhere of about 4 minutes, 30 seconds, your wife's download comes out to about 1,100 mp3s. The students' download would produce around 27 gigabytes of data, using the same average.

To download 5 gigabytes, you'd need a sustained tranfer rate of 2.84 megabytes/second, or 2,840 kilobytes/second. That's about half a T-3! On the other hand, three students downloading 27 gigabytes over two days only need a T-1 to do their jobs, at around 150 kilobytes/second.

Whee! Wasn't that fun?

-Pradeep

Re:You think that's bad?!

[Elentar]

Was there a mention on that page somewhere about 5000 gigs in 30 minutes? I must have missed it - anyway, I thought the numbers were interesting in their own right. Whose T1 did the students use to do their work? I doubt that the university would have approved of it, if they "volunteered" the bandwidth...

-Pradeep

Re:You think that's bad?!

[da_Den_man]

More like a FireWire connection to the IPOD connected to his Apple.

Yeah, let's do the math here

[jcsehak]

Let's say it takes 1.5 minutes to download a song. Let's say each kid has a seperate computer with a dedicated connection.

45 songs/hour * 48 hrs * 3 kids = 6,480 songs.

That's IF they spent no time searching and downloaded for 2 days straight. Aren't minors required by law to work something less than 24 hrs a day, anyway?

Re:Yeah, let's do the math here

[scotch]

"... except we'd come back and the computers would be frozen."

At least we know what operating system they were using ;)

Re:Yeah, let's do the math here

[mlk]

you have not used a narrow band in a while have you?

2.2MB song (a small, lofi) ~ 15mins.

Re:Yeah, let's do the math here

[gorillasoft]

Let's say it takes 1.5 minutes to download a song. Let's say each kid has a seperate computer with a dedicated connection.

45 songs/hour * 48 hrs * 3 kids = 6,480 songs.

That's IF they spent no time searching and downloaded for 2 days straight. Aren't minors required by law to work something less than 24 hrs a day, anyway?

Hmm, ever hear of filling up a download queue and then doing whatever else you want while the computer downloads your choices automagically? It's not as if you need to be there pressing some magical download button constantly.

NYT Article without the registration

[thesolo]

Go here:
http://college.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http://w ww.nytimes.com/2002/03/07/arts/music/07POPL.html To view the article without registration.

I'm not karma-whoring, I've already hit the cap.

Re:NYT Article without the registration

[Karma Sucks]

How does that work? That's brilliant!

Re:NYT Article without the registration

[Elminst]

Too bad it doesn't actually work...
Still go right to registration page...

Re:NYT Article without the registration

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK, the direct URLs aren't supposed to exist. Maybe one of the admins secretly hates the registration, and "forgets" to enable it on new machines (and then forgets to disable DNS zone transfers - how do you think people find out about these servers?).

Correllation != Causation

[Anonymous Coward]

Then: Napster use was up and music sales were up.
Now: Napster's gone and music sales are down.

This does not mean that napster's demise was the cause of music sales being lower. There could be some other reason for the correllation. For example, music could have been better a couple of years ago. That would explain both music sales and napster usage. Or maybe interest in the music scene was just higher back then. Currerntly there are plenty of other programs that filled the void left by napster (e.g. gnutella) we don't see the amount of music sales as we had in napster's prime.

Re:Correllation != Causation

[Anonymous Coward]

That's partially true. For example, the first Britney album was out (as well as No Strings Attached by N'SYNC) then when Napster was around and these albums were much better than their recent efforts.

The recent song 'Pop' by N'SYNC just plain sucks. As for Britney, 'Lucky' is kind of catchy, but the remaining songs on just suck as well.

Am I the only one that feels this way?

Re:Correllation != Causation

[zen00]

no, but you might be the only one reading /. who actually _listened_ to that crap

i agree though, the main reason that music sales are down is becuase most of the music out there sucks. napster/morpheus/etc.. might have a little to do with it, but i don't believe that the ONLY reason that record companies are losing money is becuase of it.

Re:Correllation != Causation

[MoneyT]

Haven't they realized yet that Napster et al came to be because no one feels like paying $16 plus for a CD full of crap.

Is it any wonder?

[Eggplant62]

How surprising is it that Greene was easily debunked? When we all know that mp3 trading is the best thing to happen to the music industry, this snivelling little weasel has the nerve to get all prosecutorial in a five minute rant during the Grammy award show. He may call it theft, I'd call it sampling. There are many CD's in my collection that if it hadn't been for the fact that I found mp3's to listen to, they wouldn't be in my collection. It's because of those mp3's and the ability to sample the music first that caused me to head for the store and purchase the album. The RIAA should be glad that we're swapping songs.

Now, here's a question I'd like to ask: If I have purchased all of Sarah McLachlan's albums (for examples sake) and if she were to release a "Best of" compilation, and I already own the CD's on which the songs that are part of that compiliation originally appeared, then go to USENET and download that "Best of" CD in mp3's, am I a thief? I've already paid for the rights to listen to the songs on the original albums. Hell, for all they know, I got the track list and created it myself based on burns from my original CD's.

The RIAA can go fuck itself, in my estimation, hopefully using a large, blunt instrument, such as a baseball bat or rubber pitchfork. I've never seen an industry try so hard to alienate it's customers.

Re:Is it any wonder?

[smagruder]

And the MPAA is sucking the RIAA's nipples. Watch out for the old coot Jack-em-high Valenti as he rides on his high horse attacking customers of the movie industry. Maybe these idiot savants *want* us to boycott their "entertainment" products.

Re:Is it any wonder?

[freeweed]

If I have purchased all of Sarah McLachlan's albums (for examples sake) and if she were to release a "Best of" compilation, and I already own the CD's on which the songs that are part of that compiliation originally appeared, then go to USENET and download that "Best of" CD in mp3's, am I a thief?

No, but you are infringing on copyright. Amazingly enough, the compilation itself is covered under copyright. This sort of thing is how the damn phone book is considered copyrightable. The ordering and presentation of the songs on a "best of" cd is sufficient to pass copyright standards in most countries, separate from the copyright on the individual tracks.

The trick is to download the mp3s for the songs that you originally own (even though they're digitally identical to the "best of" ones), or to rip your own cds. See how tricky things get in the 'new' digital age? Things like this are what record companies want to stop in a big way - if everyone can make their own "best of" cd's... well, let's just say that for a long time (may even still be) the biggest selling album in the world was a little thing called "Best of the Eagles".

Re:Is it any wonder?

[muzzmac]

My question is if you already owned all of the rights already (In the best of collection) should you be able to get a copy of the CD for the cost of it's production (minus paying for rights).

Extending that. I own a few videos on VCR. Can I upgrade them to DVD for the cost of the production of the media. (I already own the rights.)

This is only using thier logic on no backing up...

Re:Is it any wonder?

[King_TJ]

Yep, agreed! (Only, the software industry tries just as hard to alienate their customer-base. Look at how often people running computer bulletin boards in the pre-Inet days got a nasty FBI visit and confiscation of their property over alleged software piracy.)

(See my web site, for just one example.)

No matter what type of "intellectual property" is being peddled, the industries need to come to grips with the fact that it can and will be copied a certain percentage of the time without them receiving payment. This has *always* been the "nature of the beast", and attempts to reign it in are futile and self-destructive.

Despite what the letter of the law says, most people have no moral problem with making a duplicate of a video, song, article, or computer program once in a while. Common sense prevails, and it tells people that an artist, programmer, or even an entire industry is not going to suffer or collapse just because you copy one of their works.

I have no problem with taking legal action against someone trying to resell pirated works for profit on a commercial scale. That's a different situation (attempting to compete directly for sales of the work(s) in question).

Anything short of this, however, is just as likely to generate more future sales for the author of the work as it is to rob them of a sale.

Re:Is it any wonder?

[Bloodshot]

I can think of one other industry that consistently cries poor while revenue constantly increases, *and* works hard to alienate their own customers. Oh yeah, they bought off the U.S. government to not interfere in their operations.

It's called Major League Baseball.

not p2p anyway..

[Suppafly]

Faraz has been interviewed by the Times, saying that they spent more like three days on the project and that the other two students (both unnamed, though both are apparently attending U.C.L.A.) barely used P2P file-sharing programs at all. Instead, they used AOL's popular Instant Messenger to receive song files from friends."

The speech specifically said easily accessible websites, it didn't even mention p2p or im clients. Either way, they should arrest this guy and the kids he hired to do is dirty work.

Re:not p2p anyway..

[HardCase]

The speech specifically said easily accessible websites

I'm sure that Mr. Greene is probably one of the unwashed masses that assumes that everything on the Internet is the "web".

I remember when being a hacker was not only cool, but legal too!

-h-

Life and DEATH?!?

[UserChrisCanter4]

It's going to require education, leadership from Washington and true diligence to help our fans - that would be you - to embrace this life and death [my own empahsis here] issue and support our artistic community by only downloading your music from legal Web sites

Geez, can't the music folks go back to "raising awareness" about other life and death issues like HIV and Breast Cancer? Seriously, life and death? Has this guy been reading too much of The Onion? A statement like this completely undermines all of the actual life and death situations in the world, ones which Greene mentioned at the beginning of his speech.

The only thing seriously in jeopardy is Mr. Greene's ability to continue payments on his Porsche as he watches his 1950's-era business model crumble under the weight of 80's-era technology that's finally come of age.

How much does this article really matter?

[ari{Dal}]

I mean seriously. This guy already made his (admittedly sensationalistic and unrealistic) point live, on tv, in front of all the corporate big wigs and 'important' people he wanted to.

Do you really think anyone's going to notice an article refuting those claims, even if it is on the NY Times site, refuting his claims?

These people (The RIAA types) aren't after verifiable truths and hard facts. They're after media-friendly catchphrases and meaningless FUD they can sow to get their way.

Anything said in this article is going to be about as meaningful and have as much impact as those tiny size 8 retractions printed on the inside back of a tabloid after they've splashed the latest unsubstantiated rumour over the front cover in size 40 bold print.

FTP Server anyone?

[5arah]

So he hired three people to create some FTP servers with a fat pipeline and transferred files? They informed each other what the FTP server ip was via AIM and they downloaded at leisure? What constitutes a "College Student"? I would love to know some facts about his "fact finding" mission.

Unfortunately the public won't see this as Mr. Greene's pathetic attempt to manipulate public opinion. Oh yes, and he is breaking the laws that his company helped push through, I hope someone takes him to court :)

Hoist by his own Petard...

[cqnn]

It seems that a common theme for Content Control stories coming out this
year has been (will be) how efforts by people like this to show
the "evils" of technology will backfire due to their own basic lack
of understanding of how the technology works and where it comes from.

(Not to mention that his speech also served to make more people aware of
how easy it could be for them to get online and share music)

I know that is a little redundant, as it has been going on thru most
of the "Information Age". But its coming to the point where
this may be used more as a tool in and of itself - all we do is point
out the interconnections in the business relationships between
producers and providers, and then watch as people like Greene trip
over thier own conflict of interest.

Recording Artists Coalition

[eracerblue]

This is why many artists are taking a stand:

Recording Artists Coalition

(take a look, you'll be suprized who's there)

ps. I think I did hear one person boo... I'm sure he/she got to enjoy the remainder of the grammays outside. :/

Re:Recording Artists Coalition

[Dr Caleb]

I notice one name conspicously lacking... Metallica How interesting!

Re:Recording Artists Coalition

[mccabem]

If you would like to contribute to the death of the RIAA as we know it, please go here:

http://www.iuma.com/

and

http://www.earbuzz.com/

I listen to all kinds of stuff from IUMA from the classical "Mechanical Piano" where top modern pianists reprise Beethoven, Motzart and Schubert greats, to the progressive rock My Fine Friend Phil album.

I even bought My Freind Phil from earbuzz.com I thought it was so good.

The more support like this that artists get, the less likely they will want/need to sell out to an RIAA affiliated company.

The fewer good artists they have the better off we all are.

Re:Oh god, not again...

[Com2Kid]

"I fail to see the relevance for nerds here. Definitely not stuff that matters. Okay, perhaps he's saying that is the naked thruth or lies covered in horsedunk, all it all it just doesn't change squat. We all now P2P mp3 exchange is here to stay, and that's about it. That's NOT nerd news. "

Ugh, last two paragraphs make it obvious this is a troll but. . . .

aaanyways.

This IS stuff that matters because when some idiot brings up this little 'experiment' as proof of how bad p2p programs are we(Nerds) can bring forth the evidence to debunk this experiment.

Had we(nerds) not bee alerted this this debunking then some droid might have gotten a point against us in a debate.

Re:Oh god, not again...

[talks_to_birds]

And don't forget, soon you -- Yes You! -- may have the opportunity to pay for this.

What do I bet you won't be signing up for a subscription?

Posted from Lynx.

Graphics? What graphics?

t_t_b

Credibility...

[Bonker]

Music industry heads have long relied on the fact that money can buy credibility, especially from the two classes of people they're most concerened with... government regulators and performing artists. Before the music-sharing era, these were the only ones they *had* to be credible for.

What RIAA heads like this guy and Hillary Rosen are demonstrating, however, is their complete and total lack of intelligence, wisdom, and understanding of the technology they're dealing with. MPAA's going through the same thing. DeCSS was supposed to be uncrackable, and I beleive in my heart that Jack Valenti and his buddies bought that hook line and sinker. When Jon J. cracked it, it was not just a kick in the movie industry's legal nuts, but a phenominal blow to their credibility. Record industry is going through the same thing right now with CD copy protection. Nothing they can do will prvent the ripping and encoding of CD's, even if MP3 traders have to revert to using non-digital capture methods. (Headphone to Audio-in port, anyone?) Despite this *obvious* problem with audio copy-protection, the music studios are trudging forward with poorly thought out, poorly tested, unworkable, and uneeded copy protection controls. This makes them look like idiots to the public.

Articles like this are both promoting and refelcting the popular opinion that not only is the RIAA a bunch of idiotic cartoon bad guys, but that they *deserve* to be taken advantage of.

The RIAA's worst enemy is not P2P, MP3, or even the people who trade audio files. The RIAA's worst enemy is itself.

Yay

[rmadmin]

I did the math in my head after that wanker gave his speach, the numbers just didnt add up. I did something like,
6000 mp3's/2 days = 3000 a day
3000 a day / 3 peeps = 1000 a day per person
1000 a day / 8 hours = 125 mp3's an hour
which means about 2 mp3's a minute (on average) for 8 hours! I'm guessing they were on a bit more than the average speed of a DSL or Cable line. Anyways, glad to see it got out in the public.

Re:Yay

[Pitr]

Based on an average of 5 Megs a song, and a rough conversion of 8 Mb per MB, the transfer rate(assuming my math is right) is roughly 1.4Mb/sec(each) assuming they were downloading 24/7(or 24/2 as the case may be). More reasonable is 8 hours/day, which makes 4.2 Mb/sec. Still within the realm of reason, if you're not on campus(I didn't catch the details of their location). On campus however, good luck getting anything close to even 1.4 Mb/sec. Can we say not F***ing likely?

RICO violation?

[lent]

Could Greene's actions of hiring these students
to violate the law be prosecuted under the RICO statutes? Certainly this "Don" is hiring out the "dirty work" :-)

It seems to be covered. But perhaps this crime will go unpunished :-(

TITLE 18--CRIMES AND CRIMINAL PROCEDURE

PART I--CRIMES

CHAPTER 96--RACKETEER INFLUENCED AND CORRUPT ORGANIZATIONS

section 2318 (relating to trafficking in counterfeit labels for phonorecords, computer programs or computer program documentation or packaging and copies of motion pictures or other audiovisual works),
section 2319 (relating to criminal infringement of a copyright),
section 2319A (relating to unauthorized fixation of and trafficking in sound recordings and music videos of live musical performances),

Your Point

[milo_Gwalthny]

So what's your point? That he exaggerated to prove a point? Or that he was out and out lying and you couldn't download 6000 songs for free off the Internet?

I think what he was trying to show was that there is a huge amount of pirated music available on the Internet and anybody can get it. Of course, that's not really news.

Re:Your Point

[Paradoxish]

How about that he exaggerated to influence a group of people who don't know better and lied about the amount of content that could be gleaned in this way?

No Electronic Theft Act?

[zangdesign]

That's a new one to me (I don't keep up with every law that goes through), but if it's on the books, can we press to have him prosecuted?

He admits paying students to commit illegal acts, which falls under the RICO acts, and since one of them was a minor, there's probably several other laws he can be nailed under.

I wonder if the Maryland AG's office has heard about this.

Re:No Electronic Theft Act?

[tutal]

Ha! We don't prosecute celebrities. We tell them to go to rehab, hug a tree, or test out the new environmentally safe helicopter ejection seat (wait, maybe not that one, but it is a funny picture)

What about the students

[rewdpost]

Can you imagine how much people are going to hate them when they show back up on campus? I mean the look of fear on their faces when they were put on camera was priceless. "Hi kids, these are your peers and they're working for us to stop you from trading music, please don't hurt them" (now get a nice clear shot of all of their faces)

Just post the whole article

[Anonymous Coward]

Every year Michael Greene, the president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, stands onstage during the show he runs, the Grammy Awards, and delivers a speech about an issue that pertains to the music world. On the broadcast last week, however, he chose a strange way to make his point.

The issue he addressed was the unauthorized trading of songs on the Internet. During the awards show he showed clips of what he said were three students downloading "as many music files as possible from easily accessible Web sites." He added that in two days the three students downloaded nearly 6,000 songs.

"Now multiply that by millions of students and other computer users, and the problem comes into sharp focus," he said. As he made his point, the cameras zeroed in on the three students, all looking very sheepish.

His speech, as anticipated, ignited much discussion and controversy among music fans and those in the industry. But in addition, it seems strange that he would admit on national television that he hired three people to break the law (the Electronic Theft Act) and then show them in the process of doing this, especially since one is a minor.

And now one of these downloaders for hire (at about $12 an hour), Numair Faraz, has stepped forward to say that Mr. Greene's claim that three students downloaded 6,000 files from easily accessible Web sites isn't even true. For starters, Mr. Faraz, 17, isn't a student: he left school to start his own technology business. But more to the point, he says that the group didn't spend two days downloading music; they spent three. And most revealing, he says that most of the music wasn't even downloaded from publicly accessible Web sites.

Speaking about Mr. Greene, Mr. Faraz said, "He said it took two days to do all the stuff, and we did it for three days from 9 to 6 and left the computers on all night long, except we'd come back and the computers would be frozen."

"I was the only one who used Bearshare and Kazaa extensively," he continued, referring to two popular file-exchanging programs. "And half of my files never completed: they were halfway downloaded or not downloaded at all."

As for the two others, both students at the University of California at Los Angeles, he said they hardly even used file-sharing sites. Instead, he said, they used AOL Instant Messenger, a chat program, to receive songs, which friends sent them from their hard drives. This not only means that the songs weren't on public Web sites, but also that there is no guarantee that they were ever illegally downloaded, since some could have been from CD's purchased by students and ripped into their hard drives.

Mr. Faraz estimated that 4,000 of the songs were sent as private messages using Instant Messenger, and a few songs were legitimate authorized downloads from the Web site MP3.com.

Barb Dehgan, a spokeswoman for the recording academy, said, "The kids were asked to download as many songs as possible off the World Wide Web, specifically, publicly accessible Web sites." She added that they worked two half-days and one full day. She did not comment about the legality of the project.

While some in the music business applauded Mr. Greene's speech, others criticized it and wondered what point he was trying to make.

"Burning, ripping and sharing is not killing music," Ken Waagner, a digital-media consultant in Chicago who was part of the recording academy's board of governors for four years, wrote in a letter to Mr. Greene. While admitting users of popular file sharing software were "cheap and greedy thieves," he said they are not a real threat to the music industry. "Greed, stupidity and ignorance on the part of the policy wonks and further alienating the listener is the real threat to the business, and ultimately the artist's ability to be heard."

So why, then, when Mr. Faraz knew that the whole project was ridiculous did he go along with it? "I got free hotel in the Biltmore," he said. "That's one reason to stick with it."

Unzipped

Audiogalaxy, a free music-sharing software and Internet site where MP3 files of songs are exchanged, was once the center of a small subculture of music fans who traded zip files of entire albums as well. These files packaged every song on a CD, plus images from the artwork, into a single convenient, easy-to-download file. Because Audiogalaxy was created only for the transfer of MP3 songs, these elaborate zip files were disguised by users to look like MP3 files to computers.

But after this column on Feb. 25 detailed this practice, Audiogalaxy disabled the word "zip" from its search engine. Where previously searching for files with the word zip in them turned up thousands of full albums, now the search turns up nothing, not even song titles with the actual word zip in them.

What happened? Michael Merhej, a spokesman for Audiogalaxy, said that there was such a large amount of traffic on the site and so many different things happening in the company that executives had been unaware of zip trading. Once company employees tried it for themselves, "we did block the word zip," he said.

"The purpose of Audiogalaxy is not to download complete albums that you can go buy," he added. "The system is not made to handle this, but people contrive things to make it work."

Though the word zip is now blocked in the Audiogalaxy search engine, those zip files of entire albums still exist. One just has to find a different word to use to search for them or try the Usenet, where a whole news group is dedicated to full album downloads.

Re:Oh god, not again...

[Chris Parrinello]

"I fail to see the relevance for nerds here."

Oh I don't know... considering the music industry is the one of the main proponents of the SSSCA that wants to require digital rights management in all computer hardware and software because there is oh so much piracy... can you see where I'm going with this?

If DRM is embedded in all computers and software, how are you going to play those MP3s you get off of a P2P service?

"Slashdunk: news for lawyers, stuff that splatters"

Damn that's witty. Did you spend all day thinking that one up?

I think Taco would be better off dropping the subscription thing and instead bill people who whine incessantly "This isn't Nerd News!"

But hey, everytime those people post their whine they DO generate another page view and that's revenue I guess. Oh well. :)

Hmmm...

[leviramsey]

I wonder which OS he was using?

Speaking about Mr. Greene, Mr. Faraz said, "He said it took two days to do all the stuff, and we did it for three days from 9 to 6 and left the computers on all night long, except we'd come back and the computers would be frozen."

Re:Hmmm...

[Joe U]

Frozen? MacOS 9

Now, If they said crashed, then it was Windows 9x

New math

[An. (Coward)]

"He added that in two days the three students downloaded nearly 6,000 songs.

"'Now multiply that by millions of students and other computer users, and the problem comes into sharp focus,' he said."

Let's see, three students downloading 6,000 songs in two days...that's a thousand songs per student per day, or 365,000 songs per student per year...times millions of students (say fifty million, which was the last figure I recall hearing for the number of Napster users back before the RIAA killed it)...that's 18 and a quarter trillion songs per year!

CD prices are approaching $20 for a disc that typically contains ten songs or so. So the music industry must be missing out on $36.5 trillion dollars in sales every year. Since their actual revenues are closer to $10 billion—a mere one three-thousandth of their potential—it's no wonder they're so upset about file sharing.

Re:New math

[tutal]

I'm going to go a step further with the $36.5 trillion in sales. If you figure about what the average indie artist makes from their music that means that the average indie artist would make about $1.47 (not counting the $2000 studio fees, $1500 production and another $1000 packaging, and finally $100 for about 10 cases of Miller drank while writing/recording.

Net profit -$4598.53

yippie we're rich

Re:New math

[UM_Maverick]

Don't forget about all the bandwith it would use...

18.25 trillion songs, at an avg of 4 megs/song works out to a little under 2,314,815 megs/second (assuming I didn't screw up the math)

woah...where do I sign up for *that* connection?

Re:New math

[MayorQ]

More math fun... 6,000 songs in two days, assume 12 hours a day, at ~5MB per song yields ~.347MB/sec. What hosts were they visiting?! If I could get .347MB/s of sustained bandwith over 2 12 hour periods I'd crap my pants.

- MayorQ

Re:New math

[trixillion]

in other words 888 thousand bits per second, which would be the relevent metric.. not bytes. To sustain that across 3 students, would require a pipe with more bandwidth than a single T1.

Re:Oh god, not again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Forest through the trees my friend. Yes it may not be great news, but when all CD have built with encryption and everything is pay for play, then all the suddden your stuck! The laws decided the boundries of our society, and I for one am very intrested in keeping up with what bone head lawyers, lawmakers, and corps are trying to drum up with out either 1) thinking it through or 2) having enough sense to ask about something they don't understand.

It's all fun and games till somebody loses some freedoms.
--cade

Don't call for his arrest!

[poot_rootbeer]

He WANTS to spread the meme that downloading music off the internet is illegal. If a warrant goes out for his arrest because he hired some people to commit the "crime" of downloading MP3's, then his point will have been made. Transferring an MP3 file between computers is not a criminal act -- UNLESS the recipient is not licensed to have a copy of that content.

His implication that the results of hiring 3 people to do nothing but get MP3's all day long for $12/hr plus lodging can be extrapolated to represent the behavior of "millions of students and other computer users" is, of course, ridiculous.

You didn't even read the article, did you?

[HardCase]

The subject says it all...

-h-

Downloading music is WRONG

[interstellar_donkey]

Whats worse is, none of my freinds belive how easy it is! I have to download music all the time on to my hard drive just to demonstrate to them how far this has gone.

I even have to listen to the songs I've downloaded all the time just to be sure these are in fact illegal songs.

I think I should ask the music industry to help me out with a few bucks so I can continue educating the general public about this.

oh great...

[dingleberrie]

And I bet that he's not going to buy any music now.

At 4 minutes per song, that's...
(wait a sec...)
over 16 days of nonstop music.

At 75 minutes per CD, that's 320 CDs.
At 15 bucks per CD that's $4800 in revenue
(or $4500 in profit) that the record company
has had stolen from them!

My brother has worked at an independent CD maufacturing plant for 13 years (they used to do tapes). He repairs the duplication machines
They handle programs, music CDs, etc. They often make shipments directly to the consumer.

I recently asked him how much they charged to produce a CD today.

He said "18 cents."

I said "No, I mean with the case"

He said "18 cents."

I said "No, I mean with all the inserts and stuff."

He said "That's included in the 18 cents."

He wasn't kidding.

Re:oh great...

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't worked in that industry since the late '90s but 18 cents still sounds a tad low. Maybe that's a special rate for high-volume purchases. I did the same thing your brother did. Worked on high-speed tape duplicators and loaders and CD injection molding machines.

Re:oh great...

[bumbadi]

Well, In India, we can buy CD-R's for Rs 20, which comes to about $0.45, (and if I am not wrong to 50 cents) They are not the best quality(usually locally made), but you get the idea.

Re:oh great...

[Anonymous Coward]

18 Cents??

Well in order for CD's to cost about $20 bux, that would mean that the transportation costs and store markup would be $19.82.

We're after the wrong People, the RIAA are our friends.... They wouldn't be taking $15 bux a CD.... No.. never...

It must be the evil Transportation industry. All those truck-drivers with their plush reclining leather seats, Gold chromed hubcaps and of course the trucks that drive themselves.

We must stop this at all costs.. I plan a call to arms.. Tonight every driver on the way home, cut in front of the nearest big rig and slow down to 7 mph. That'll teach 'em...

Not using P2P clients? Oh my!

[ottffssent]

Why download files of suspicious origin and quality from someone who might go offline in the middle of your download, when you can get them from friends who know what they're doing? I used a P2P client whose name I can't even remember anymore once but it sucked for those very reasons. I have a friend who runs a fileserver with about 50,000 tracks on it. They're all well-labeled, have ID3 tags, are encoded at good bit rates with good encoders, and he's not going offline without warning people first. Only friends have accounts on the machine, and he accepts logins only through SSH and file transfers only through SCP. There's no comparison between the level of service he provides and what a P2P client provides.

P2P tools are just that. Tools. Like FTP, SCP, ICQ file transfer, AOL file transfer, &c. Their existence does not create piracy - it is just another way to do it. Resnet here experiences massively more traffic due to kazaa and audiogalaxy than FTP and SCP and I expect this is generally true. Combined with the fact that there's no money behind them, they are easy targets for the huge media companies. If AOL/TW and thee RIAA members were really serious, they'd sue AOL/TW and Microsoft too.

I'm torn between wanting them to cut it out because it's just silly and wanting them to win and teach people to be a little careful and use encryption. Spreading packets all over the internet with your IP and the names of the copyrighted works you're downloading is just stupid. People are paying attention. My ISP told me flat-out that they've sold their souls (isn't that a good Slashdot phrase?) to Sony (among others, though only Sony was mentioned by name) who analyzes every packet they handle searching for copyrighted works.

emjay didn't perform

[Karma Sucks]

Who watched the Grammy's anyway, once they announced they had cancelled emjay's performance?

Now that would have been something worth watching, all jokes aside.

The DOJ should now be forced to prosecute him

[Anonymous Coward]

By his own admission he has violated Federal Copyright laws, has Contributed to the delinquency of a minor and should be prosecuted and fined for doing so. He had no legal right to do what he did (e.g. no court order) and then went on TV and admitted that he had done it.

I would urge everyone and their friends to gather this evidence together (video tapes, web page printouts, etc...) and send it via USPS snail mail with a certified return receipt to the DOJ asking them when they will be prosecuting him.

The more of us that do it, the more likely it is that he will face fines and penalties for his actions. I'm already looking for a copy of the actual speech (not just a web transcript, but the actual video of him doing it) and will be sending this to the DOJ.

Re:The DOJ should now be forced to prosecute him

[athakur999]

...and in doing so, give validity to the RIAA claims that downloading music is wrong and not "fair use", and that people who do so should be punished.

It's best to leave things the way that they are. He paid these kids to download music and then admitted to millions of people he did it, and wasn't punished. Obviously, if he was so brazen about it and wasn't punished, it wasn't something wrong...

Re:The DOJ should now be forced to prosecute him

[darrylballantyne]

According to Numair, there was an agreement signed beforehand. You'd think that the agreement would indemnify him - but no, it actually indemnified NARAS, not him. So, if someone's thinking about suing, they'd have to go after Numair & Co. - which wouldn't be very nice.

Of course, it should also be noted that "prosecution for criminal offenses cannot be waived by the aggrieved party" - so the government could go after them if they wanted to. (See http://www.loc.gov/copyright/title17/92chap5.html# 506 for the relevant criminal code).

In fact (and here's the interesting part) - they DIDN'T EVEN DO ANYTHING ILLEGAL. *Downloading* is in itself not illegal - it's uploading that's illegal. Non-commercial downloading is specifically exempted. From NETA:

TITLE 17
Sec. 1008. - Prohibition on certain infringement actions

No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.

Re:The DOJ should now be forced to prosecute him

[hidden]

*Downloading* is in itself not illegal - it's uploading that's illegal. Non-commercial downloading is specifically exempted. From NETA:

yes...

but if he paid them to do it, then it's not reallly non-commercial, is it?

Re:The DOJ should now be forced to prosecute him

[Enry]

Downloading music you do not own is illegal.

On the flip side, if I have a copy of "Animal Crackers" on DVD, but I want a DivX copy so I can watch it on my laptop, I should be able to hit a site and download a copy. I already own it.

Re:The DOJ should now be forced to prosecute him

[kerrbear]

No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright

Once again a logical fallacy regarding this law. Just because this law cannot be used to bring action against copyright violations, does not mean that there are no other laws that can bring action against copyright violators.

The so called "fair use" provision is not there. They just wanted to restrain the scope of the law so it would not be abused. It says nothing about existing copyright law. (BTW: I believe in fair use, I just don't see it here).

seemingly positive effect...

[slugfro]

...the facts show that Napster, et all seem to have a positive effect for the most part on sales

You need to remember that an actual correlation between Napster and increased music sales cannot really be made. Granted for the brief period of time in which Napster was around, the industry may have seen increased sales but don't make a correlation that isn't necesarrily true (even if we want it to be ;] ).

Just becuase two things happen at once doesn't mean they are related. If that were true, people might start claiming things like the El Nino effect increases purchases of gaming systems, etc..

Re:seemingly positive effect...

[Myxorg]

You need to remember that an actual correlation between Napster and increased music sales cannot really be made. Granted for the brief period of time in which Napster was around, the industry may have seen increased sales but don't make a correlation that isn't necesarrily true (even if we want it to be ;] ).

Actually that's kind of the definition of correlation. I think what you mean to say is that a correlation does not imply a causal relationship. Classic example:

As the amount of Ice cream sold goes up, so to does the murder rate. This is a correlation. There is no causal relationship between the two. It just so happens that in the summer ice cream sales, and murder rate rise. Probably because of the heat, but then again that's just a correlation.

Re:seemingly positive effect...

[brightloudnoise]

Although one might argue that videogame systems, music and dvd sales have increased due to the cocooning effect seen post sept 11th.

Re:seemingly positive effect...

[ichimunki]

Others have pointed out that while this *is* a correlation, it does not imply causality. But remember it was the RIAA who frequently asserted a different causality, that Napster promoted "theft" and thereby lowered sales. Now that Napster is gone, their sales are down. This clearly indicates that their assertion was not only a logical fallacy, but patently untrue. The other considerations to keep in mind are that the RIAA seems to have upset some of its major customers-- us geeks.

I'm certain that previous to Napster, I bought a lot more music than I do now that I'm boycotting. I get the sense that others are also upset, people who were previously purchasing music. If anything, treating customers as criminals has heightened the sense (in the customers' minds) that we should just copy everything as much as possible to get back at them for first gouging us on CD prices (which none of us minded that much), but then coming after us when we were attempting to share music (which allowed us to pretest albums before purchasing, thereby feeling less gouged when we went to buy stuff).

Also, half the stuff that was being shared on Napster was stuff we've all been hearing for years and years for free on the radio, but never would've spent a cent to buy. Or we knew we liked the one song, but couldn't care less about the rest of the CD.

The point I'm belaboring here is that there *may* be some correlation to the drop in sales and the closing of Napster. I'm not saying it's 100% for sure, but it's a possible influence.

Send your nastygrams here

[smagruder]

Send your emails of disgust to ron@grammy.com, barbd@grammy.com and heatherm@grammy.com.

Here's some of the choice words I just sent them:

"Burning, ripping and sharing is not killing music," Ken Waagner, a digital-media consultant in Chicago who was part of the recording academy's board of governors for four years, wrote in a letter to Mr. Greene. "Greed, stupidity and ignorance on the part of the policy wonks and further alienating the listener is the real threat to the business, and ultimately the artist's ability to be heard."

Greed, stupidity, ignorance - apt descriptions of the entertainment conglomerates. We customers ARE NOT stupid, and we're onto your game. We know your game. Game's over.

We look forward to seeing idiot savant Greene join old fart Jack Valenti in the Hollywood Hall of Shame.

Pirates

[Pac]

It was said in another context, about other kind of digital object:

"Owners use smear words such as 'piracy' and 'theft', as well as expert terminology such as 'intellectual property' and 'damage', to suggest a certain line of thinking to the public---a simplistic analogy between programs and physical objects.

Our ideas and intuitions about property for material objects are about whether it is right to take an object away from someone else. They don't directly apply to making a copy of something. But the owners ask us to apply them anyway."

Read the whole text

Actually, I believe the word "thief" is too much prone to libel. "Pirate", being not in any dictionary acception what someone who copies a song or a software is, helps reducing this risk while conveing the message of someone who will board the poor record company, rape its women, kill its men, sell its children as slaves and take away all its treasures.

The problem is that these executive and marketing types are easily confused. Sometimes in their small money counting brains the analogies get blurred and they start to believe the metaphor is real.

Re:Pirates

[td]

"Pirate", being not in any dictionary acception what someone who copies a song or a software is

This is simply untrue. For example, Webster's 7th New Collegiate Dictionary contains:

pi.ra.cy
('p{i-}-r*-s{e-})
...
2) n, the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or
conception esp. in infringement of a copyright

If you consult the OED, you'll see that the first recorded use of piracy in this sense is hundreds of years ago, only a few years after Britain enacted its first copyright laws. The idea that anyone today is trying to evoke brigandage on the high seas when they use piracy to refer to unauthorised reproduction of copyright material is not very credible.

Re:Pirates

[Acy James Stapp]

Mod this up. This is the first I've seen of it and if it's true it's something that should be made known.

Missed my 45 seconds of fame!

[ackthpt]

Dang. I was supposed to be there, too, but I received all my songs through a model 14 Teletype, and am still running them off on paper tape.

Chucka-chucka-chucka-chucka-chucka-chucka--

Hmm, maybe lower sampling rate next time...

Re:Missed my 45 seconds of fame!

[Zanth_]

This is the first funny post I have ever replied to...damn that was funny....good one dude!

Re:ack!!

[slakdrgn]

ack, well atleast it wasn't commented "troll" but it does represent some of the mentallity of this junk. If he wanted all p2ps shut down, he would have aimed his search twords them and not p2p and the web... course I could be totally wrong..

Well down one karma point.. anyone got any extra points to donate? :) (j/k)

how to torture musicians (Mac version)

[Dr. Awktagon]

This is like a modern voodoo doll:

1. Select an MP3 (Metallica is usually the best choice)
2. Create a new folder on your desktop, and put the MP3 in that folder.
3. Open the folder, hit command-A (select all) and then command-D (duplicate selected files)
4. Repeat the previous step until your hard drive fills up.

You should be left with hundreds or more copies of the MP3. With each copy, you have STOLEN from the artist. With each copy, your artist LOSES MORE AND MORE MONEY. By the time you get to the end, each keystroke should be DRAINING THEIR BANK ACCOUNTS of THOUSANDS of DOLLARS!!

If we all did this, we could instantly bankrupt any artist. For even more damage, move the MP3s to a CDR and repeat.

Re:how to torture musicians (Mac version)

[yesthatguy]

See? The recording industry is right. Steve Jobs and co. are very active participants in trying to inflict as much damage to media companies as possible. They even include AppleScript capabilities, so that this anti-capitalism could be completely automated. Just one click, and you can watch the entertainment industry crumble - just think (different) of the possibilities!

the "web"

[jfruhlinger]

This slip of the tongue might just be a result of the general public's sloppy use of the word "web". When the Internet first took off in the mid 1990s, you saw all sorts of long-term Internet users fly into pedantic rages when people used the words "web" and "internet" interchangeably (i.e., "sending email through the Web," not referring to an HTML mail client like Hotmail.)

To non-Internet savvy folks, everything online is "the web" and anything you may encounter there is "a website".

jf

Worst

[Pac]

Think about how much the people who make the phisical CDs are losing. If all these misguided students were actually buying the CDs they steal, we would probably be mining the Moon, Mars and the Asteroids Belt for raw materials to make all these discs.

And don't even get me started about the potential losses of the transport industry.

downloading via WWW -- Was FUD

[xrayspx]

It's extremely easy to find pretty much anything on websites. Creative Googling is all that is required. Search for "index of mp3" for an example.

Windows version

[QuantumG]

would be ctrl-a ctrl-c ctrl-v and I guess on a linux box you'd just write a perl script :)

Re:Windows version

[jayhawk88]

The +1 Informitive on the parent is perhaps the funniest thing about this thread.

Re:Windows version

[QuantumG]

One has to agree, although I thought "modern day voodoo doll" was kind of amusing.

Uncrackable digital format

[tutal]

I've got a new format for the music industry. Make CD's a bit larger, for example approx 12" Since the digital stream is so easy to copy, just make the bumps on this new disc at different levels to accompany different volumes, pitches, waveforms etc. To read this a conventional laser would not be useful, so a needle would have to be used instead. You could also save quite a bit of machine wear and tear by slowing the rotation of the disc to, oh about 33 1/3 revolutions per minute.

What's that Mr Edison, its already been done. Oh well vinyl sounds better anyways.

Re:Uncrackable digital format

[LennyDotCom]

To read this a conventional laser would not be useful

I know your trying to be funny but there are record players with lasers. They are quite useful because they don't wear out your records

Re:Uncrackable digital format

[tutal]

Thanks for the info, I'm glad you caught me in my blatant attempt at being funny/sarcastic.

Re:Uncrackable digital format

[zmooc]

I've even seen a record-burner using laser...but I can't find the link anymore:(

Alcoholism is Bad

[shawnmelliott]

It's so bad that I'm going to prove my point. I'm going to take 5 17 year olds and get them drunk in a bar in Tijuana. That'll show em... yeah

Re:Alcoholism is Bad

[Treylis]

Mod this sonovabitch up.

Wait A Minute?

[PhreakinPenguin]

You mean that speach was aimed at people downloading mp3's?

Ok, I guess I need to pay attention then. I thought when he was talking about robbing artists of their livelyhood, and making sure artists get paid for their work, he was talking to the record labels. But then again, they do pay the artists a whopping $.12 a record.

Re:This article

[WraithX]

"that he had hired" is legitimate English. It is not the same as "that he hired". The worst crime in using it is that it is ambiguous; does he mean that he had someone else do the hiring, or that he had done the hiring himself?

"he hired" is the simple past active tense and "he had hired" is the past perfect active tense.

Rules were made to be...

[cgenman]

Let's not all claim ignorance and say that we don't realize that millions of songs are available at any given second thanks to technology, and let's not pretend that this isn't the sort of nirvana that music lovers and humanists have always wanted. Greene made a mistake on the number of days, and made a common mistake of equating the Internet (the network backbone) with the Web (a comparitively well-policed HTML protocol). Those aren't all that important.

More revealing than anything is that in hiring children to break this law he showed just how little he thinks of pirating himself. Therein lies the dillema. Do you think these kids deleted the songs from their hard drives? Is it that horrible? It isn't bad for me to do it, it isn't bad for you to do it. But if everyone does it, then nobody gets any more music (arguable). In the USA, that argument has hardly convinced half of the population to get up and vote, and voting is free.

While it would be an interesting twist, I don't wish jail upon Greene. I reserve that for Rosen. Sadly, though, they are both too rich to go to jail for something as trivial as this. Then again, if they really had the guts to set an example...

I have a real hard time believing this assertion

[mellonhead]

From the NARAS website:

The show is now seen by more than 1.5 billion people in more than 175 countries, all celebrating the best the worldwide music community has to offer.

From the U.S. Census website:

According to the International Programs Center, U.S. Bureau of the Census, the total population of the World, projected to 3/7/02 at 22:46:01 GMT (3/7/02 at 5:46:01 PM EST) is

6,210,026,610

More than one quarter of the population on EARTH watched the grammy awards?
No way...

Get your data straight

[borgasm]

Greene needs to get his data straight. He specifically points to the usage of Napster, P2P, etc...as a direct correlation to record sales.(i.e. if Kazaa downloads increase, sales go down.) This is in fact not the case, since when downloads go up, their revenues follow the upward trend. Their sales have been higher than ever until 2001, and obviously economic factors and the 9/11 disaster accounted for this loss of revenue. The industry finally had a down year to blame downloads which have seemed to "help" record sales. But the question remains...Is the industry losing money that was never going to be spent in the first place?

Re:Get your data straight

[Alsee]

since when downloads go up, their revenues follow the upward trend.

It would be amusing to see if the recording industry had a down-blip correlating to the MorpheousEvent.

-

Corrupting the youth, and other crimes

[jhantin]

Give 'em the Hemlock!!

I just about fell out of my chair laughing. Too bad I don't have mod points. :-)

There are a couple distinctions between this case and the famous one of old, though... the charge of worshipping false gods wouldn't fly in the US (despite continuing religious intolerance issues), and IIRC Socrates was trying to make Athens a better place at the expense of entrenched interests instead of defending them.

Re:Corrupting the youth, and other crimes

[Jobe_br]

At the risk of revealing how poor my classical education was, could someone post what Give 'em the Hemlock is in reference to? I always hate it when I don't get a joke or a snide reference to something. But, I treat it as an opportunity to learn something new :)

Re:Corrupting the youth, and other crimes

[gabriel-dialupusa]

It is in reference to the method by which Socrates was executed. Read "The Death of Socrates."

Arn't the classics fun?

Re:Corrupting the youth, and other crimes

[JabberWokky]

I doubt it, considering sexual service to your superior was the norm in many Greek societies.

--
Evan

Re:Corrupting the youth, and other crimes

[Aqualung]

Yes... Socrates was given hemlock to drink after being found guilty of corrupting the youth of the day. Not that I'd liken Greene to Socrates myself, mind you...

Say it with music!

[Jay Carlson]

I was daydreaming in a meeting the other day. Somehow, the complaints about the length of the show and the finger-pointing sermon collided. So I had this vision:

Rosen and Valenti's corporate masters suggest that because it's a music show, next year's rant should be a musical number. They've even got the rights lined up for the appropriate song, with a few modifications.

A band launches into the Squirrel Nut Zippers song "Hell"; the two mouthpieces bound onto stage, dressed in tuxes, carrying canes. They sing:

(Cue swing/calypso music)

Hell
Innnn the afterlife
You could be headed for the serious strife
Now you make the scene all day
But tomorrow there'll be hell to pay [...]
Oh, the D and the M and the C and the A,
And the S and the S and the S-C-A
Lose your net, lose your games
Then get fitted for a suit of flames!

(The committee in charge of coming up with this was delighted by how little they had to change, but they couldn't quite figure out how to change "suit" to "lawsuit" and still have it sound right.)

Re:Say it with music!

[psychosis]

...
And you'll be getting a lawsuit of flames!

(put the emphasis on 'law' and it kinda works...)

Recording music for friends is legal

[LeBain]

Recording music your own for friends (like via buddy lists described here) for free is covered under the fair use laws. It's when you provide music to people you don't know (and presumably wouldn't be on your buddy lists) that you're breaking the law.

Madster is P2P search, but not anonymous

[yerricde]

Can you use AIM to search for files?

Last time I checked, the software formerly known as Aimster allowed searching your buddies' file lists.

Using RIAA's methods

[AndyChrist]

Using their methods for calculating estimated losses to piracy:

3 people grabbed 6000 songs in 3 days. So that's about 666 per person per day.

If we just for the sake of argument say that 10 million people are trading MP3s, that's

10,000,000 x 666 = 6,660,000,000

Songs illegally downloaded EVERY DAY!
So, assuming 18 dollars per song, since people are only downloading decent songs and the industry standard is one good song per album...losses to the industry are:

6,660,000,000
x
$18
------
$119,880,000,000

EVERY DAY!

$43,756,200,000,000 every year!

We can't let them get away with robbing THE ARTISTS of FORTY THREE TRILLION DOLLARS!

Re:Using RIAA's methods

[kreyg]

And, if we (conservatively) assume an average song length of 2.5 minutes, that's 666 * 2.5 = 1665 minutes of songs to listen to a day. With 1440 minutes in a day, I'd love to get ahold of whatever time-distorting device they are using to actually listen to all of those mp3s.

NARAS != labels; the songwriters

[yerricde]

Since they were hired by the Recording industry who holds all the copyrights in question, wouldn't they be stealing from themselves (on an organizational level)?

No, they were hired by NARAS and AOL(tw). Major labels (i.e. RIAA members) and independent labels (i.e. non-RIAA members) claim the copyright on the recordings. And doesn't allowing users to copy recordings freely potentially constitute a breach of the contracts of the songwriters? (There are two separate copyrights on a sound recording: the copyright in the recording itself, and the copyright in the underlying musical work.)

Re:NARAS != labels; the songwriters

[Jobe_br]

For those not knowledgeable on what NARAS stands for, here you go: National Academy of the Recording Arts and Sciences. Not quite the same as the Recording Industry Association of America. The NARAS represents the people who MAKE music (singers, songwriters, musicians, sound engineers, etc.) and the RIAA represents the people with the money that hold the contracts that NARAS members are bound to. That's an oversimplification, but it should be close enough to convey the gist of each association.

Please, keep your shitty music

[Ars-Fartsica]

You mean Greene is going to stop me from downloading pap shite like rock-disco-retards No Doubt and neo-plastic-earthy-tripe Dave Matthews?? How oh how will I get by without this putrid excuse for legit music?

AIM? from friends?

[s88]

I highly doubt this. They are probably talking about AIMster which, can hardly standup to any arguments against it being a P2P technology.

If I search for Metallica and I find 7,000 screen names that have those files, are they suddenly my frieds?

Re:This article

[jonerik]

The fact that you can embed a link to the article within your own text, does not absolve you from using correct grammar.

Instead of saying "The New York Times has this article...", you should say "The New York Times has an article..."

Trooooooolllllll....
Technological changes justify adjustments in grammar under certain instances, gramps. The ability to add links to text is one of them.

In addition, you shouldn't say "...that he'd hired" (which is really saying, "...that he had hired"). Instead you should say "...that he hired..."

Why? I had intended to use the past perfect tense - which refers to a past event (the hiring of the students) which occurred before another past event (the Grammy broadcast) - and "he'd hired" accomplished that admirably. Try reading up on the past perfect tense sometime while you're riding the short bus.

Finally, the sentence beginning with "Leaving aside..." is a run on sentence. It is very difficult to understand, due both to its run-on nature, and excessive use of parentheses.

Would I write a novel like that? No. But a single-paragraph submission to /. is hardly a novel.

Re:how to torture movie studios

[sam_handelman]

It's even more fun to do this to the movie industry.

Here's a list of instructions, much like the ones you just gave, although they are written in a context-free language so that they can be interpreted directly by a computer as well as a person, to unencrypt the contents of a DVD - ugh, my head.

THE POSTER'S BRAIN CONTAINS THOUGHTS WHICH QUALIFY AS CIRCUMVENTION DEVICES UNDER THE DMCA. THEREFORE, IT HAS BEEN ERASED. - YOUR FRIENDS, THE MPAA.

What was I talking about? Oh, 40 days and 40 nights was such a great movie!

This issue was raised on Dmusic on March 1st

[thumbtack]

DMusic.com raised questions about the speed of the downloads and numbers way back on March 1st in this article

They suspected that the test was faked, or done from dedicated servers, as even with broadband connections P2P filesharing is often much much slower. It was obvious from the beginning that the numbers didn't add up....

The "Entertainment" Industry...

[Robber Baron]

(Note: I have posted this in another discussion so before you go accusing me of karma-whoring...I don't care if this gets modded up.)

entertainment
Pronunciation: "en-t&r-'tAn-m&nt
Function: noun
Date: 15th century
1 : the act of entertaining
2 a archaic : MAINTENANCE, PROVISION b obsolete : EMPLOYMENT
3 : something diverting or engaging: as a : a public performance b : a usually light comic or adventure novel

Somebody needs to remind the ENTERTAINMENT industry just what exactly their place is in the grand scheme of things! They've bent and twisted copyright laws and now they want to cripple every digital device under the sun, and for what? To protect Mickey Mouse cartoons and a few lousy movies??? NO! It's ENTERTAINMENT! It isn't something that actually matters that much! Yeesh, You'd think that it was a "national security" issue...like protecting nuclear secrets or something!

No Disney, you can't cripple all the computers. People use them to do things that are more important than a stupid cartoon mouse...like helping to treat the sick!

6000 - not that much really

[martissimo]

6000 songs split 3 ways (2000 songs each) figuring the avg mp3 is 3-4 megs a piece comes out to 6 to 8 gigs per each of the three.

even downloadin off a fairly slow mirror i just got the two RedHat isos (bout 1.2 gigs) in under 4 hours, with my crappy power link connection i wasnt even gettin the kinda speeds im capable of. on a fast server i could have done it in half that time easily.

i'd assume that to proove his point they gave theese 3 access to a T-1 each at minimum, maybe they shared a ds-3 or somethin who knows, but im sure the bandwidth was not skimped on to proove their point most effectively.

6000 songs doesnt really seem that impressive, but then again nothing about that example they tried to make is...

Anyone else see a math problem here?

[The_Shadows]

"...6,000 songs. That's three kids, folks. Now multiply that by millions of students and other computer users and the problem comes into sharp focus.... The RIAA estimates that - now listen to this - an astounding 3.6 billion songs are illegally downloaded every month."

Because, remember, no college monitors bandwidth to websites. Every student and every other computer user has 8 hours a day to spend downloading MP3s, and wants to do so. Everybody I know skips class and parties to download music everyday. My parents don't work. They just sit around and download music on Morpheus. Everyone I know really does download about 1000 songs a day. In actuality, there are probably 500 billion MP3s downloaded everyday. Just take the number of web users (approx 500 Mil (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/03/07/17102 21&mode=thread&tid=95)) and multiply by 1000. Now, multiply by 365. That's 182.5 Trillion MP3s per year! Wow! No wonder the Record Industry sales were down a few percentage points this year.

I'm glad I'm not an RIAA investor of any sort.

[NanoGator]

"...he RIAA estimates that - now listen to this - an astounding 3.6 billion songs are illegally downloaded every month."

I know last year wasn't very good for the RIAA, but it seems like there'd be a larger chunk taken out of their profits if this were as damaging as he's trying to make it out to be.

I think what's going to happen is that the RIAA is going to play this 'pity us' act for the next couple of years until it realizes it can't bend the law in their favor anymore. Eventually a new organization will form that will do basically what the RIAA does (finds and promotes talent...), and then make them big on the web.

Frankly, I'm glad I'm not an investor for the RIAA. I'd be plenty hacked off. I can liken this to Intel and 3D accellerators. 3D accelerators put less processing on the main (Intel) processor and more on the add-in card. So when a gamer wants to upgrade their machine, an investment in a video card has better yields than an investment in a new processor. This means Intel could potentially get less money.

Did Intel try to put a stop to 3D cards? Nope. The first thing they did was they tried to compete in that market. Unfortunately, their offering wasn't that great. Nividia kicked their buts basically. So what'd Intel do? They didn't try to pass laws that require computers to only use one brand of processors all across the board. They didn't accuse people of buying video cards instead of new processors of being theives or even disloyal. They didn't even muck around with the AGP standard to prevent these cards from reaching full potential. Instead, Intel worked with driver developers to make their CPUs talk more with the video card. Early in the 3D card game, the choice to make was which card do I want. Today it's 'which card/processor combination is ideal for me?'. Now I realize I'm oversimplifying what really happened, but instead of 'correcting my details', take away the point I'm making which is that Intel innovates to compete, instead of trying to buy legislature in their favor.

What the RIAA should have done was taken Mp3 trading as a call to innovate. The simple fact of the matter is that audio is easy to capture and easy to transmit. So what do they do? Well, one idea would be to release a new format that has more capabilites. One real simple idea is to have music "DVD's" with music videos and other goodies on board. This creates at least a temporary problem with would-be hackers because they have new challenges to overcome to transfer the full experience into a web deliverable component. The more features they add to these disks, the harder it is to get a satisfactory piaratable copy out there that'd truely devalue the media.

The RIAA could have been spearheading the MP3 player movement. They could have made a player that plays little chips/cards instead of discs, solving people's mobile needs. Maybe they could have created a new media that is smaller or can hold more.. or something like that. I dont know. The point is they could have done SOMETHING to try to compete. The idea that they think CD's should be all people listen to forever and ever seriously limits my estimation of how long they'll be around. If I were an investor, I'd be selling now. It's obvious this organization isn't trying to grow.

oh god jesus!

[Perianwyr Stormcrow]

I had no idea that music was worth more than most of the planet...

No wonder the music industry is so powerful. I bet they just give the senators involved small countries when needed.

Whats youre friends e-mail? ;)

[Unknown Poltroon]

He sounds like a good man to know!!

Huh?

[Codex The Sloth]

ps. I think I did hear one person boo... I'm sure he/she got to enjoy the remainder of the grammays outside. :/
Huh?
Enjoy the Grammies? I think not..

So,

[SuiteSisterMary]

So, seeing as how we all know that EVERY mp3 downloaded represents the lost sale of a CD, shouldn't the RIAA be after this guy for, lets see, 6,000 CDs at an average of 20 bucks a CD, 120,000 dollars?

Lying is not the issue

[Xunker]

Okay, so he lied. He was bait and he got ate and it's his own damn fault. What does this mean in real terms?

Not a damn thing.

How many people watched that speech? Million--Tens of millions--Maybe hundreds of millions. How many people know about him being debunked as a fraud? Perhaps a million if you stretch the figures.

It's not a great leap to assume he willfully lied -- and why shouldn't he? It was a carefuly crafted gamble. So what if even half of the people who watched that speech believe he's a charalatan? He has still indoctrinated is message in the remainder of the people who don't know any better.

He either lied or didn't bother to follow the real figures, not because thought he could get away with it, but because he knows that it doesn't matter if he gets away with it or not. Public relations people everywhere know that a lie is only a lie if you know about it.

Re:Lying is not the issue

[da_Den_man]

Actually, only 19 million people saw the Grammy's. Count half of those as not even knowing what he was talking about. 9 Million is a good estimate.

I didn't know...

[frank_adrian314159]

... that Britney Spears and N'Sync had 6000 songs to download!

Re:Free Reg Required

[Adversive]

No, you don't have to register. But there's a trick to it. New York Times will not allow you to link directly to a story from another website.

Try this:

1. Click the link from the main page.

2. This brings you to the redirect URL:
http://www.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http://www .n ytimes.com/2002/03/07/arts/music/07POPL.html

3. Replace the first "www" with the word "college" (or the word "archive").

So it now looks like:

http://college.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http://w ww.nytimes.com/2002/03/07/arts/music/07POPL.html

Then go to that page. Voila, no registration required.

I'm from UCLA!

[Yumi Saotome]

Damn, where are these "students"? I need to find out why their internet connection is so good. UCLA's internet connection sucks hardcore.

Or perhaps they're the ones hogging all the bandwidth?! Damn them!

Oh, but Hollings will protect him!

[One grumpy old UNIX]

As long as good ol' Fritz the lapdog is around, it doesn't matter what the truth is. The music industry is in a panic as they begin to lose their grip on the creations of others.

http://www.theregus.com/content/54/24195.html

Of course, if Hollings gets his way, we'll be forced to pay every time we whistle a tune...

Wrong market

[J23SE]

I think the RIAA is aware that it gets some boosted sales through increased exposure to music, however, their main target with new legislation isn't your generation, but, more importantly, future generations. Even though I don't agree with the means they are trying to pursue, they realize that they can not retain their iron grip over music and strong sales, as my generation will not pursue the same philosophies as yours. I constantly see these posts on slashdot, anecdotal experiences about purchasing music due to a p2p utility, but I don't see this sort of activity occuring among my peers.

Let me clarify: I'm a 17 year old in a fairly rich suburban high school region. . . Even in the face of prosperity, most of the kids involved in p2p sharing in our school are doing so without the intentions of ever buying a CD. Even though this is a well-off suburban region, most kids are fairly limited in money supply - when balancing movies, friends, and everyday food, music is the easiest to scratch off the list because it can be obtained from p2p. As we get more and more accustomed to the idea of downloading music for free, buying music may become foreign to us, thereby locking off a large market segment for the RIAA.

In the past two years, even though I have downloaded over 3000 songs, I have not purchased a single CD. In fact, the mentality I have described has pervaded me that I do not think I will ever buy a CD. Rinse and repeat for most of my classmates, for whom piracy of music has become so commonplace that they ask why they should spend their hard earned money when they can just download for free.

Granted, the RIAA should embrace this changing market as opposed to rough-handing the changing market to its own needs. However, I do not think that the argument of a net benefit from the piracy of music will hold weight for much longer.

but.... but.... but....

[AugstWest]

barely used P2P file-sharing programs at all. Instead, they used AOL's popular Instant Messenger to receive song files from friends."

What exactly does this prove? The guy's point was how easy it is to hand music to other people over the internet, and how simple it is for people to acquire things that have never before been so readily available.

Whoever wrote this is nitpicking to avoid the matter at hand.

Re:but.... but.... but....

[ScannerBoy]

The use of AIM over P2P is very important. They could have easily set up a machine with 6000 songs on huge bandwidth and then just transfer them over to the "test" machines. In reality it takes a good deal of time to search for the song your looking for, then find a decent connection to DL it from, and finally hope that connection stays open long enough for you to get the file. All this takes TIME. Just having my AIM buddy on the next block send me his hard drive doesn't prove that people can actually DL 6000 Useful songs in 3 days (or 9 days for one person).

Re:but.... but.... but....

[jonesvery]

What exactly does this prove? The guy's point was how easy it is to hand music to other people over the internet, and how simple it is for people to acquire things that have never before been so readily available.

I disagree. I think that the "point" of this example is vague, to begin with -- this was a publicity stunt for the Grammys, nothing more or less. The students could have spent the three days playing Unreal for all that it really matters.

In my opinion, the fact that no one is yet sure how the students got the music starts to get at the central issue. Did they get the songs "from easily accessible Web sites?" Did they get them via Napster or Gnutella? Did they get them from friends via AOL IM? Did they set up a public FTP server and have people transfer files? I don't know, and I don't think that it really matters.

What record companies would like is a return to the time when the content could not be separated from the physical artifact. You want to listen to the new Chuck Berry song? You buy the actual plastic record -- no other options available. From the industry perspective, this was the perfect arrangement

Since recording devices first became available to the consumer market, however, that arrangement has changed drastically. I myself once owned hundreds of 90 minute cassette tapes, filled with music that I may or may not have paid the record companies for.

Yes, technological developments (drag-and-drop CD ripping and burning, mpeg compression, a worldwide computer network) have made illegally duplicated music more readily available, but to use an often repeated phrase, we aren't going to be able to cram the genie back into the bottle now.

The various experiments with copy protected CDs, burners that won't write certain data, etc. seem thus far to indicate that a technological approach to restoring the content/artifact link may work in the short term, but that link will be broken again by future developments.

The record industry has to approach this situation from a realistic business perspective: it has been decades since it was possible to prevent people from copying and sharing content. It may be possible to minimise this sharing, but not to eliminate it. I have the suspicion that record companies have to take that fact into account (if they haven't already) and start working on building some business models that reflect the current reality.

What took so long?

[cappadocius]

Not wow at all. If they just transfered from friends, then I am surprised it took so long. I have 1500 legal mp3s on my computer. On a campus network I can transfer those to a friend in a few hours. Call up four friends with similar sized collections and little overlap and you are done in maybe 12 hours tops! With only one person!

Not that any of that prooves Greene's point. In the real world people use much faster p2p networks. They don't select files en masse. And most people aren't in college right now, so don't have the fast transfer rates that go with it.

another thing ...

[wompychomp]

One of the kids said he still went along with the scam even though he knew it was wrong because he got a free room at the Biltmore. If we (the kids who download music) are going to go up against the big bad guys, shouldn't we stick by our morals too? I mean, a room at the Biltmore would be nice, but isn't this all about the principle? Nothing against any of the students who downloaded the tunes but I think they should have told Senor Greene where to stick it when he wanted them to play his little game.

Guilty as charged...

[Pac]

Sorry, I never knew that. As it is, being a foreigner from a non-English speaking country, I would hardly have ever come across such a piece of information.

My only doubt is if when a member of the general English speaking population hear the word "pirate" the image that comes to his/her mind is that of photocopiers/CD-burners/etc or that of bloody smeared swords and black banners under a tropical Sun.

Re:Guilty as charged...

[Daengbo]

At this point, the former

Re:Guilty as charged...

[bonzoesc]

YARR! An' that's too bad, matey! Me an' my crew, we be tryin' to restore our good image, but those rapscallions in the RIAA keep tryin' to attack and board me pirate ship!

Breaking News: File transfers banned from Internet

[Tokerat]

WASHINGTON - In a startling move today, legislators in Washington voted to pass the new and controversial File-transfer Universal Contraban Treaty. Under this new law, any and all transfer of data across the Internet that can be catagorized as a "file" is hereby banned. This will effectively end such file-sharing nusances such as Napster, Gnutella, and the blatantly-illegal File Transfer Protocol.

In related news, the RIAA and MPAA jointly announced the grand opening of their online digital movie/music store today, before being fined and having their equipment confiscated under violation of the recently-passed FUCT bill. "We're going to loose millions on this deal, it's an outrage!" said Jack Valenti, fresh out of the hospital after recovering from a carpal-tunnel injury sustained while signing lobbyists' checks. "We will fight this in the highest courts until justice is served"...

This will never end.

quick questions

[ComSon0]

In his speech he mentions that ripping also has to be stopped because it's criminal...
I might be wrong, but isn't ripping legal? Just the sharing with commertial intent is illegal right?
Can someone say:
This is legal: .....
This is illegal: ....

thanks :)

You're right

[Chris Pimlott]

OED Online: 'piracy'

Have him locked up.

[billcopc]

Have this guy locked up for ten years. He abducted three teens, forced them to perform illegal acts which he later blamed them for and washed himself of any guilt.

Seriously, it's fricking religious nuts like these that are turning the world into a bureaucratic nazi hell. Money has corrupted these people beyond return, and then they go on TV and tell the world how fun it is to be a corporate puppet.

Stop the civil wars, and declare a war on these hotheads. They are the ones threatening our lives and our freedom. They are the ones who want us locked up just because we're going to deprive them from one cup of coffee by downloading one song off the net, when they can very well afford coffee without our help. They are the enemy.

Ha

[E-Rock-23]

You know what? If I had access to a line where I could gather 2 friends and suck down a mega library of tunes, I'd do it in a heart beat. I'm sick and tired of paying $18 bucks a disc (we buy them for 25 cents apiece anymore). Fuck the RIAA, fuck their opposition to the revolution.

The record companies will have to face it. Music was once a freedom that humans enjoyed. Once they found out they could control the flow, they pounced. But not that we can control our own musical habits, they've lost the edge and ability to suck us dry. Guess what: You no longer control things. We do. Face it, it's over.

Music fans will support their favorite artists by going to clubs. And artists dying to be heard will take the opertunity to get their music to reaches that not even a little local company could hope to do (which is where most bands end up nowsdays).

This guy basically said Fuck You to the RIAA and it's machine. The bands want the money because the companies take the majority of it. The only way they make tons of cash is if they're really huge. And yes, some are greedy. But give them control of their own musical destiny (ie take away the CDs and say hello to true digital music) and you'll see them quiet down. No longer will the companies be making all the cash. The few people who actually run things, that is. The bands will see what they deserve if they do it properly. And the RIAA will have no say...

Re:Ha

[E-Rock-23]

If you're going to be high and mighty like that, at least identify yourself.

Didn't I just get done saying that I believe in giving control back to the artist? If anything, I was talking about giving the power of the copyright back to the artist, allowing THEM to regulate their cash flow. Not a bunch of RI execs. If we fans choose to support them (like we always do at concerts, hello), then they'll have no trouble laying down a few bucks for some downloads. I wouldn't, ut then again, I'm also a musician.

Who'd have thought

[Chuck Chunder]

I'd have discovered a reason to respect Christina Aguilera?

Free adverstising for piracy

[Max the Merciless]

I can see all those kids at home watching the Grammies, and then this old codger tells them they can download 6000 songs for free! Talk about planting a thought in their heads!

They'll be straight off to bug Dad for an internet connection!

What university?

[emmons]

Out of curiosity, what university are you at? Wisconsin-Madison here, our resnet blows too. That's what they get though when they try to put 7500 bandwidth-hungry college students under a 40mbit cap. :(

6,000 songs to UCLA? Ha

[pclinger]

I go to UCLA many times each week and hook up my laptop to go on the Internet. Their connection plain out sucks. You may get 10KB/sec during regular hours, 20KB/sec at night. Someone could probably download about 450mb during regular hours, and 850 at off peak hours (if they were just going constant all day and night). So thats 1.3GB/day. 1.3GB would be how many songs? Maybe 400. Unless they had friends at UCLA transfering directly over their network, then it would be quite a bit faster.. but still, 6,000 songs?

I say it's BS. There is no way in hell that a couple UCLA students downloaded 6,000 songs in 2 or 3 days. I hang out in the dorms there all the time and know what the connection is like.

Re:6,000 songs to UCLA? Ha

[Jesus IS the Devil]

And how about the folks that insist they use Napster ONLY to download songs they own? I think the exaggeration goes both ways...

The RIAA is robbing me blind.

[zero1101]

So if the they paid these kids $12/hour...

$12/hour x 8 hours/day x 5 days/week x 52 weeks/year...

The RIAA is trying to ROB me of $24,960 a year! Where's my PokeSenator??

Some info on Michael Greene. (The Guy's a Crook!)

[broohaha]

There's a Pulitzer Prize-winning piece done by the L.A. Times on Michael Greene and his questionable dealings. The series of articles is available on the Pulitzer site.

Also, any of you living in Chicago may want to tune into to an excellent radio talk show called Sound Opinions. It's aired weekly on WXRT (93.1 FM), Tuesday nights from 10pm-midnight, hosted by rock critics from the Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune.

Anyway, they interviewed Michael Greene a few months back, and he hung up on them when they brought up the L.A. Times piece. Since last Tuesday was the first show after the Grammys, they spent the first 30 or so ripping on the Grammys. In particular, they talked about Michael Greene and replayed a clip of when Michael Greene hung up on him.

It doesn't look like the archives have been updated to include this week's show, but check back later.

Not so sure

[Pac]

Down here, the equivalent of BSA runs ads with the skull and bones banner and eye-patched pirates in its campaigns against software copyright violations. The message comming across is much more like the later.

so nice to know

[maxpublic]

It's so nice to know that if you're rich and powerful you can use legal technicalities to commit crimes without getting prosecuted - and then brag about it on national television.

My nation is in the toilet.

Max

I think the guy is lying..

[Chicane-UK]

Just doing a simple little bit of maths.. assuming that every MP3 file they downloaded was 3.3MB :

They downloaded a total of 19.8GB in two days..
If they stayed awake for the full 48 hours, they would have been downloading 412.5MB/hour of data between them. That seems quite possible I guess if they were downloading constantly. But assuming they took 8 hours of sleep a day and didnt download files during that time, that would have been 618.8MB/hour..

I dunno - theoretically, these stats are quite possible, but including all the time it would take to actually find the music, and have to cancel from unreliable sources, it just doesn't make sense for me.

read the law

[Max Hodges]

read the law. What violation did he make? None!

Quick ban IM, sue AOL

[Performer Guy]

So are RIAA now going to sue AOL Time Warner and force them to stop distributing this subversive Instand Messenger software? This is absolutely delicious and shows just how foolish some of the earlier hysteria has been. Unfortunately instead of seeing the truth, that people will find a way using the tools available to them, they lie about their findings and misrepresent which software was used in an attempt to demonize a whole class of applications.

Bigest Disappointment of the Grammys

[frank249]

was Micheal Jackson not showing up. I heard he was going to do a duet with Britney Spears and sing "I'm not a girl, not yet a woman".

to jail

[overlord]

send him to jail, that is what he deserves

+1, Guts

[sphere]

I was watching the Grammies and as Greene gave the same old industry spin on "digital music piracy," I definitely heard some guy in the Grammy audience actually yell "BOO!"

Whoever that Grammy boo-boy was, he definitely earns a Guts Award.

Search with Lycos

[Anonymous Coward]

I have always found that for willful copyright infringement, Lycos is your best bet. Google has the tendency to actually return useful information. If I want to know something, I use Google - if I'm looking to commit copyright infringement, it's Lycos.

(And not just for mp3s; Lycos is where to go if you want to find, say, old infocom games)

Re:Search with Lycos

[xrayspx]

OOH Games, I need H2G2, and Leather Goddesses from Phobos. Good tip.

Is this the same guy...

[Sloppy]

...who I saw on "Politically Incorrect" a week or so ago? I remember some guy (it had to have been this dude) saying that he had three kids rip 6000 songs. I couldn't figure out what he was talking about (how does reading 600 CDs make a point about copyright violations) until it became apparent he was talking about downloading.

I thought it was interesting that he would abuse the language in that manner, trying to make "to rip" into a bad thing. Ignorant mistake, or calculated malice? Hmm...

No, he wasn't kidding...

[Svartalf]

That's why I pretty much stopped my CD purchasing habits. I listen pretty much to what I've already purchased and not a lot more. I don't listen to the radio all that often these days either.

That price, it DOES put things starkly in perspective, doesn't it?

Folks, isn't it time to remind them that we're why they're here in the first place and they should be a little nicer to us?

Slashdot Marxists (was Re:oh great...)

[hyacinthus]

I just love this old canard, dragged out at least half a dozen times for each Slashdot discussion on music piracy--oh, I'm sorry, "sharing". Piracy is justified...because CD's cost too much! and how do we know they cost too much? Because they're so cheap to manufacture! Look!

You are aware, of course, that the idea that the value of a product should be equal to (or at least derivative from) the cost of its manufacture, the cost of materials and labor, is essentially a Marxist concept.

hyacinthus.

Re:Slashdot Marxists (was Re:oh great...)

[Niddix]

You are aware of course that in a capitalist society the market drives the price of a product. Couldn't one say that the rampant downloading and sharing is a direct result of the *product* being priced out of the market.

New Math

[gnovos]

Using RIAA numbers:

3.6 Billion songs downloaded every month...

6000 / 3 students / 2 days = 1000 dl per day per person...

= 3.6 Million people per month

= 1.4% of the population of the U.S.

BUT, the RIAA never said this was only in the US, so if we take the world population into account...

0.06% of the world population...

Oh, the horror! The RIAA can't survive on the money of only the "honest" 99.94% of the population!!!