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Internal MP3 Server? 1 Million Dollars Please
nkruse pointed out that our pals as the RIAA are breaking new ground. According to this Reuters Article, the RIAA has succeeded in collecting 1 million US dollars from Arizona based Integrated Information Systems. IIS apparently had a corporate MP3 repository on it's network. This is the first time I've heard about the RIAA doing this kind of thing. Looks like they're taking a page from the BSA handbook.
The more they do this the more enemies they will get and the less sympathy they will get from the public!!
Another perfect example of the record labels just wanting to suck more money out of us. If we brought our original CD's in, stuck them in a CD tower, and played them at work, that'd be legal, but using something slightly more advanced to store the music (like MP3 files) is considered illegal....
One of these days, the record companies are going to find themselves out of a job - artists will realise how useless the labels actually are, recording equipment will become too cheap for the record companies to justify their (huge) slice of the revenue, and we will finally see the end of this rubbish.
A company promoting piracy is even worse than the individual person who feels it's OK to shoplift or steal music.
Piracy is when you take music that didn't belong to you (or your immediate family). We're not talking the distribution of music.. We're talking the playing of music threw a digital loud-speaker. It's at most no different than a company playing a CD throw a real loud-speaker, getting caught by the immorally abusive RIAA. I can not believe such an offence is worth $1 million in back-pay (ignoring for a moment, that I believe that such activity is illegal).
If individuals pirate the music off the mp3 server, then they are individually responsible for piracy.
The whole question of napster is still unresolved as far as I'm concerned, so my chief argument is that it's not a cut and dry bad company.
-Michael
-Michael
I'm sure the RIAA considers this a major victory. How much of the million bucks will go to the artists? You know, the people they are trying to protect. This has got the be to most expensive CD duplicating machine I have ever heard of.
I noticed that Integrated Information Systems had a dedicated server to serve up MP3's. Would the settlement reached $1M if it had just been some directories on NFS or Samba.
This kind of stuff will scare the business community in a serious way. You can be sure the software police will be given new gestapo powers real soon in a corporation near you.
Have to admit, IIS sounds very stupid in this. But $1M would buy a big stack of CD's (especially considering the discount you could get for volume)
Uh, guys?
This is *not* the same as making MP3's of all your CD's to listen to from your PC while you're at work. The only way this would have been "ok" would be if every single employee owned all of those CD's.
I think the RIAA's policies stink, but in this case they had the right. Not liking them doesn't give you the right to steal from them.
Bryan
(who's going to do a scan of his networks tomorrow for MP3's to delete - if the users don't want me to find them they'd better stick them on the C: drive)
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
On a loudspeaker, only one song can be played at any one time.
With physical media (i.e. purchased CD), only one player can operate at any one time.
A company playing music over its loudspeaker system is violating copyright, much as a radio station that did so would also be in violation.
Whether the company is good or not, it is wrong to allow this sort of illegal activity on its premises. They deserve to pay the fine (as was decided by the courts who agree with me).
If you brought your original CDs into your workplace and played them on your company's equipment, that'd count as a public performance, and would also be technically illegal. Sad but true.
I have an internal MP3 server of my own in my home. Blocked at the router level from the net. It contains nothing but MP3s taken from the racks of CDs in my living room. The only other user of it beside myself is my Wife. Both of us own iPods.
I'd still bet the RIAA would come after me if it knew of its existance, and claim that it overrode joint property laws.. no skip that.. they go straight for Fair use being totally illegal in the first place.
This may be considered good news, if they continue this trend. Why? It's a whole lot better to attack people or businesses that are actually doing something illegal (though the legality of this is in question, the fact remains that they settled before it was taken to court, the law cannot stop that) than to attack KaZaA, Morpheus, Napster, Gnutella, etc. just for being tools that are capable of helping a person do something illegal.
To me, this is like putting drunk drivers in jail for killing a person in an accident, instead of suing the crap out of Ford for making the car that has the potential to kill people if used incorrectly.
The speed of time is one second per second.
So is this a fine or has it collected royalties? Are they then saying IIS can proceed and leave the songs on it's server? It sure sounds like the company paid for licenses to me.
IANAL, but as far as I can tell, it is still legal to have an MP3 jukebox in your home and let people use it there. Now, it would clearly be violation of current copyright law if a business played MP3s for customers (say, a restaurant). But if employees let friends and coworkers to their music over the network at work, what's the problem? Does the fact that this takes place at work all of a sudden make it commercial? It seems to me they went after IIS because they had deep pockets and caved in easily. I would have liked to see this play out in court. And we have to wonder what's next: is the RIAA going to raid our homes? Will we have to pay fees based on the number of people present when we play music?
But you are right, libraries are irking the so called "media publishers" more and more, I think they just aren't feeling in a strong enough position to eliminate them - it's a big undertaking, might take some time, but will definitely help revenues.
sic transit gloria mundi
the article saliently mentions "dedicated" whenever it talks about the server - does that make a difference or something? IANAL so just curious.
sic transit gloria mundi
if you're displaying it in a manner that is explicitly designed for public consumtion, then it's a public performance. ie, if you stand on a street corner, and jam the boom box with copyrighted material, then it's a public performance. if you're playing music in the kitchen, when the dinning room is cleared, then it's private fair use.
if you're playing copyright material to an office of people, it would most likely be public performance.
you cannot take a projector and a dvd/vcr or whatever and play any movie up on the side a building at night time for anyone to watch. you need permission from the copyright holders to do that.
...that IIS was in the wrong in this case. But I hope I'm not the only one who's growing weary of RIAA's smug, sanctimonious, self-serving statements:
"We applaud IIS for accepting its responsibility and working actively with us to settle this case out of court.''
I can't help but read "...working actively with us..."' as "...bending over..."
Bleh.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
I do think the $1M figure is pretty much insane though.
My beef with RIAA and MPAA is NOT with their opposition to Napster-ish music distribution; It's their repeated attempts to legislate mandatory crippling of consumer electronics (and outlawing of certain kinds of programming) to protect their interests at the expense of my rights.
I would MUCH rather see RIAA taking the kind of action described in the story - going after actual "pirates" - instead of presuming before the fact that every consumer is a thief who cannot be trusted with uncrippled hardware.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
The RIAA fills me so full of vinegar and bile that I can hardly think to express myself.
Well hopefully this will just attract more attention to the independent music scene. I refuse to buy an Album that has anything to do with the RIAA nor will I support and artist who represents them.
I hope someone over there is reading this. I am a good customer of your fool. I have over 750 discs in my collection. I used Napster as a tool to discover new bands. You freaks seem to think that I should pay 17 + dollars to check out a group i know nothing about? You are on crack.
I am not anti-corporation. I am anti-stupidity. And by the fact that you turn down free organic publicity you have more than proven your stupidity. I admit that some people who would have bought CD's won't now because of peer to peer sharing. But many of us would have bought even more. I now I hope more of us won't.
Burn
(/local/home/curiosity)-#who -u|grep thecat|cut -c 44-49|xargs kill -9
Would the RIAA have a claim if the company in question were only to put songs which it's employees owned copies of onto the server? Furthermore, if the company required that employee to put their CD into a vault and restricted the server so that it could only stream the files and indeed only stream them to one person at a time? This would allow more people access to the music, but shouldn't be much different in principle to a library. Just a thought....
I'm rather disappointed in the postings on this....even from Slashdot. Assuming the article is correct, and I know that's a big assumption, this company basically sponsored piracy. They paid for a server specifically for music sharing. That's a "bad thing". There is a very big difference between someone bringing in MP3s and a company sponsoring the sharing of them. The company puts itself at VERY large risk for such things. I'm a network admin at a medium sized company and I don't even allow Gnutella/Napster/Kazaa clients to run...at all.
This isn't fair use. They didn't let a friend borrow the CD. They ripped the CD and put the files on a server for everyone to get. Fair use may have a case should there have been software on the software to let a user "check out" a song and while it was checked out, no one else could access it. But I really don't think that was the case, do you?
I've known companies that had MP3 servers, but they were always known by the users. They weren't ever really recognized by management. I bet many of those go away tomorrow morning when word of this gets out.
Not that I think this company should have been fined, but how much of this will the artists be getting?
"I'll say it again for the logic-impaired." -- Larry Wall.
So, if I play my CD's at a party I throw at my house, does the RIAA expect me to compensate for that? How about if a friend is in my car, and we listen to my CD's, is that a public performance? How about if 8 friends are in my Suburban?
Or maybe I go out to the pool with my boombox and throw on a CD. Do the other pool-goers constitute the public? Do I now need to wear headphones to avoid licensing fees?
When I invite a friend over to watch a movie, do I have to buy a copy of the movie for each visitor? Do I need to obtain permission from the MPAA before watching a movie with friends? How about with my cats? They like to watch tv as well, you know.
Sure, you could argue that all these are indeed a public performance. Of course, my argument would be that were the RIAA/MPAA/etc. to try and enforce any of them, they would be (a)laughed out of court, and (b)bankrupt and pennyless in a matter of weeks. Why should this case be that different?
Which is why, of course, it is absurd to call intellectual output "property". Of course, originally it wasn't considered "property" -- that is why the Framers saw fit to put in a specific Copyright Clause in the first place. Since the sanctity of (actual) property was already well-established, if intellectual output had been property, they wouldn't have needed a separate clause to protect it. (A major premise of constitutional law is the economy of words.)
So, I agree that the "antiquated" laws are not the problem. It's the newfangled ones that are mucking us up
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
I see. The threat of a long costly litigation, with a decent chance of losing and having to pay even more exorbiant court-ordered fines -- a threat backed up by the judicial power of the United States -- had absolutely nothing to do with IIS' decision to settle? Ah, the scales fell from their eyes; they saw the error of their ways; and they gratefully shelled out $1M as a voluntary penace along with the admonition to go and sin no more? All on their own, in a conversion experience that might as well have happened on the road to Damascus?
Just how is the weather on your planet, anyway?
If the courts were not enthusiastically subscribing to the RIAA's view of reality, then the RIAA would not have the giant bludgeon they currently wield. Coypright infringement is a matter of law; it is settled in the courts, ultimately; and any out-of-court settlement certainly derives from the potential mediation of the courts. The legal climate is the prime mover here, too, even if the formal process isn't followed.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
There is a huge difference in my mind between
1) An employee putting an MP3 on employer owned equipment
2) An employee putting up a MP3 server without the employers knowledge
3) An employer sponsoring and condoning the spread of MP3 music throughout their corprate network
The first two are the employees problem, the third it is time to go after the employer.
I worked at a company where it was a firing offense to put up a shared MP3 repository... They had rather deep pockets and didn't want anyone to get their grubby hands on it
Easy, if you know its illegal you shouldn't be doing it. :)
Someone at that company must have had broadband at home. Set up the server there and presto bingo! The likelyhood of it being the company's fault rather than your own just plummeted.
You're missing the point. You _are_ allowed to put your purchased CD in the CD-ROM drive-tray at work last I checked. From that, it's trivial to rip the CD and save the files locally so you don't have to bring your entire CD collection back and forth from home. It is beyond immoral for a company to tell you how to live your life (e.g. that you must carry your original CDs with you as you would an ID card (which so far is only enforced for visa's and drivers licences in special circumstances)).
Assuming that you agree with me thus far, then it is not too far of a stretch to fathom a personal archive of music at work on a work machine (much like you'd install your own background image, or heaven forbid, your own OS).
While company policy might restrict such use of a computer (e.g. a bank that disallows entry/departure of data/files), most aren't this strict.
A company that encourages a "happy" work environment might be more than willing to facilitate personal audio archives, and my concern is this is completely legal. BUT, as we all know, this doesn't stop interested parties in thwarting such use for their own profit. They could very easily loby congress to make such specific use illegal... And that's my beef.. That just because there is a law, doesn't mean it's the end of the story. There are millions of horrible and immoral laws. I personally feel strongly that such media restrictions fit into this category.
-Michael
-Michael
Is this any different? Would this company have still been sued if the local mp3 database had some sort of locking mechanism that only allowed songs to be played on one computer at a time? And regardless, how can they prove that more than one copy was played at a time, be it the original cd or the mp3 version or multiple instances of the mp3 version? Seems to me the RIAA had a weak case legally and the company for some reason figured it was better to just pay the bully and walk away without the bruises. Even with royalties paid for 'public performance' it should have been nowhere close to $1mil.
As long as this isn't a hoax, the word really needs to get out about this.
Think local diner with CD jukebox system.
Yeah, in the US, if you are a bar or restaurant with a jukebox, you have to do the ASCAP/BMI license thing but the upshot is that you can also legally play music over your PA in the restaurant, have a cover band play other bands' songs, etc. The licensing organizations do a survey at certain intervals to determine average usage of the jukebox and charge royalties based on that.
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
Huh? If I bring my CDs into work, I can play them on a boombox loud enough for the whole office to hear. That's called "fair use". But now if I take those same CDs into work, convert them into MP3s, and let the same people listen to them, now its "pirating"? All these people did was use the corporate network to timeshift the playing of a few CDs; this sort of falls in the grey area between fair use and exploitation, but by no means justifies a million dollar fine.
Actually, that's not fair use, as others have pointed out. (And fair use is not an absolute right, as we heard on Slashdot last week.)
Playing your boombox at work loud enough for everyone to hear is an illegal broadcast, but it's a grey area. The music companies probably aren't going to come after you because:
a) it's not a serious offense
b) it's probably not costing them any money
c) it's hard to enforce
d) if you did this in a large office, you would be shot
I know that there's a certain culture on Slashdot that doesn't seem to understand the concept of a grey area. I don't know why; maybe writing code in binary makes people think in terms of Boolean logic. Running an MP3 "sharing" server at work is illegal because it is an obvious attempt to defraud the copyright owners. Playing a cd in your car in the presence of two friends is not an illegal broadcast because your intent is not to defraud the copyright owner. Sometimes, in the real world, you have to use your judgement.
It's one thing to violate the letter of the law without violating the intent; it is quite another to manipulate the law by exploiting a loophole. As soon as you start trying to exploit a loophole in the system, they're going to come after you. Now you can do some real damage to their business. You can play your cds at a private party, but you can't play your cds over the PA in a supermarket, even if you try to spin it as a "food party".
Plus there is a difference between listening to a song because it happens to be on the radio, and choosing which song to listen to because you have millions of MP3s on a server. You may think that's splitting hairs, but it's not. It's not a distinction between black and white, it's a grey area. You may define ownership however you like, but the record companies are pragmatic. They know that what makes music worth buying is the ability to choose when to listen to it.
-a
How to rationalize theft.
No, actually piracy is when you take over a ship on the high seas. What you are talking about is copyright infringement. I don't mean to be rude, but please don't do their work for them by helping them mangle the language like that.
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