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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.
I guess these Universities are going to be next...
t m
Quote:
A new file-sharing program called Phynd is burrowing in at a handful of universities...
...Phynd limits its searches and its users to computers on the network on which the program is running.
http://chronicle.com/free/2002/04/2002040402t.h
"""
This sends a clear message that there are
consequences if companies allow their resources
to further copyright infringement,'' said
Matt Oppenheim, RIAA Senior Vice President,
Business and Legal Affairs.
"""
The message I heard:
Large, money-laden industry group can use a
broken legal system to easily take even more
money from others by leveraging antiquated
and ridiculous idea-ownership laws that need
sorely to be changed.
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.
IIS apparently had a corporate MP3 repository on it's network
Is this an undocumented feature of IIS 5.0? And is it a good enough reason to switch from apache?
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)
This isn't all that different from what the various (c) organizations have been doing for some time. Most infamous was the 1996 effort by BMI/ASCAP to slap fines on the Girl Scouts for singing copyrighted songs around the fireplace -- an effort that backfired in terms of the PR (and led Congress to specifically exempt the Boy / Girl Scouts).
(This article at GigaLaw provides some useful background).
I've heard IP attorneys compare these guys to the Mafia -- they basically go around extorting companies to pay them hush money and keep their attack dogs at bay. For large companies, the price of buying them off is cheaper than the price of hiring defense attorneys.
I can see a company like IBM getting sued for sharing millions of songs amongst it's employees, but a small company (less than 15 people) that I know of used a simple non-published mp3 archive, where people had their own personal folders that they could bring music from home, so they could listen to it at work.
Though not enforced, theoretically, the only use is to allow individual listening to their own music on a storage facility greater than that of their own computer. It was more cost effective to have one big large hard drive then have a dozen large hard drives (not to mention the company was SCSI, so it would have been an administrative nightmare to upgrade all the machines this way).. Not to mention that the individuals worked on several UNIX machines, and could easily mount their drives as necessary in the different labs.
To make this legit, they could have restricted access to each mount, and thus no sharing would occur.. As I said, this wasn't enforced however.
How can a networked computer be allowed to legally space-shift legitamit media without fear of the RIAA / SS?
The real question here is that in a small company, does the RIAA really have jurisdiction. With a company that small, people would ahve lent each other CDs from time to time anyway (often duplicating onto cassette tapes, which has never been really refuted).
Should such a company be worried? Or is the gistapo getting closer to getting it's power stripped?
-Michael
-Michael
http://www.riaa.com/PR_Story.cfm?id=505
The RIAA's News section is definitely worth a look, in a know-your-enemy sense.
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
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.
This happened to a friend of mines company ... This guy *installed* pirate software himself on alot of the machines in the office, when he got fired he called the BSA and reported the software *he* had installed. BSA blackmailed the company for 150,000$, they went bankrupt 6 mos later ... (they were headed for bankrupcy regardless, but the BSA signed their death warrant).
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
So what you're saying is that it's illegal for you and your spouse (or other live-in companion) to listen to the same CD? You both have to own a copy? Or that you can't lend a CD out to a friend and let them listen to it? Or plop it on a tape to have an alternate storage location? Or even lend that tape out to a friend?
A lot of these activities which are now claimed to be illegal are permitted under the Home Audio Recording Act.
Just a little interesting part of the article, the RIAA is stepping on some major dollars here by screwing with Hollywood's connections. Maybe they aren't working for the same goal after all....
If you were born with the unfortunate ability to hear sounds and thus music, you should.. no YOU MUST pay the record labels.
During your life you might accidentally overhear music that you haven't paid for and thus rip off "the artists".
Thus, the TAX will be an innitial fee on birth, based on your preliminary hearing tests. If found to have the ability to hear, you will be charged the TAX as an annual % of your income. Should you have no income within the first 10 years of your life, the record labels will render your hearing useless to stop your criminal activities...
This should address all those MP3 and other music piracy problems at the source..
I checked through my Boy Scouts of America handbook thoroughly, and I can't find anything in it about the RIAA or MP3's. Odd.
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
Now not only are software companies allowed to come into your business and snoop around for no reason, the RIAA is allowed to come in as well?
They're not. Especially since they're not law enforcement. If the BSA or the RIAA shows up at your door, turn them away. They can't do a damn thing about it without law enforcement present AND a search warrant, which you are entitled to look at (so if the cops do accompany them, simply ask to see the search warrant).
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
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
So who was the employee that got so ticked off at the company that he ratted out his employer to the RIAA? Is there a bounty now on piracy?
Ka-Ching.
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.
This fine is preposterous.
I worked for starcd which recognises music from the radio. We got a quote to buy every album that a song had been played from on the radio in the last five years five or more times. It was just over $100k.
How can they possible justify a settlement of this size. This is the most unvelievable abuse the RIAA has demonstrated of it's corporate massivity. I have an mp3 repository, and I own every CD that I have a recording of. I would like someone to explain to me how this doesn't constitute fair use?
I bet they only settled because RIAA is too large to fight. So much for the American justice system.
-
Everyone is living in a personal delusion, just some are more delusional than others.
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.
now if I take those same CDs into work, convert them into MP3s, and let the same people listen to them, now its "pirating"?
What if you're using your CD in your car, and someone at your work is listening to the same CD's mp3's? You got two people using the same disc, essentially.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
Just thought of a way around this.
Let's say we set up an economy within our office. We buy and sell CDs on demand. At the beginning of the month, you bring in whatever CDs you want to sell. You deposit them into the office trust, where they're "converted" to a more economically liquid form, onto a digital hard drive.
Now all we need is some simple software that "trades" CDs. Whenever you want to listen to one of the many volumes in the repository, you buy it on demand. You real-time trade one of the CDs you deposited in exchange for the ownership of the one you want to listen to.
The only hitch is when multiple people want to buy a CD that no one wants to sell, or when no one wants to buy any of the CDs you brought in so that you don't have any purchasing/exchange power to buy any of the others.
Obviously, in a small office, there's not a large enough "economy" to make this work, but for a 1,000 person corporation, it's unlikely that you'd ever have to wait more than a few minutes. Especially if everybody brought in enough CDs. The redundancy along would keep things rolling. Now what if it were multi-corporation?
IANAL, but this seems like a perfectly legal brokerage-type method to share music without breaking the law.
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
No, you can play music on a speaker as long as the general public can't hear it. For example I can park my car and crank up the music for my friends to hear, even when we're out of the car. I can also play music at work without using headphones, and I can turn it up loud enough for the person next to me to hear it, but if I worked in a supermarket that would be a no-no.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
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.
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?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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
Yes it would be illegal if you and your spouse were listening to separate copies of the CD.
If the server software limited connections so any particular album could only be played by one client at a time, then IIS may have been able to escape liability. Of course they would have had to buy all those CD's too, I'll assume they did.
Think of the CD as a book, you can buy it and lend it out - thanks to those who fought the publishers earlier - but you can't lend out copies if more than one copy or any copy and the original will be used at the same time. If only one client were able to listen to any particular album at once, the company would have been in the clear. IANAL, but from my reading I believe this to be true.
There are some additional problems I've thought of that arise from this - what if I were to rip a book into chapters, and lend them out individually? Would that be legal? I wouldn't think so. Based on my reasoning above, what if I were to allow different people to listen to different tracks, with no more than one person listening to a track at the same time? This sounds just as legal as ripping a book into chapters and lending those out. But now think of multiple people listening to the same track, but different parts of the track. User #1 could say be "borrowing" offset 0:32 of a track but will have returned it by the time User #2 gets to it. This raises some problems, I haven't seen it discussed so far though. Technically, it seems ok as long as the same part of a song isn't sent to two users at once, it would appear that two people can listen to the same track at once. The server could simply wait a second to begin additional streams, in the unlikely event the same song is called for by separate clients at the same exact time. Can someone clarify on this?
You got two people using the same disc, essentially.
And..... and what? The universe explodes? Time starts moving backwards? Giant marshmallow-men roam the streets? Somewhere, a musican you don't know dies?
Copyright law is really starting to smell, if you ask me. Somebody better drag it out of the room before it really stinks up the place.
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
Dear RIAA lawyers,
Next time try fucking around with a real company. You'll be laughed at if you ever go after an mp3 server in an engineering department at General Electric, or Chemistry lab at SmithKleinGlaxo. Real companies wouldn't give you the time of day, let alone answer your phone calls or sign for your registered letters. You're pathetic.
Cheers,
JB
we hand over our cajones to the RIAA and its ilk
Why would they want our large boxes?
I think you meant "cojones". The word "caja" means "box" and adding the "ón" ending indicates "large", so "cajón" means "large box", and "cajones" is the plural, "large boxes".
The word "cojón" means "testicle", so "cojones" is "testicles", which, I suspect, is what you really meant.
Correct spelling is often important, but when you're using words from another language it can be really important.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
SOMEWHERE IN A DUNGEON FAR BELOW RIAA HEADQUARTERS (AP)-- The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) today announced it is introducing a bill tin Congress making it illegal for artists who are not members of RIAA or associated with RIAA member-labels to record songs for public listening.
The RIAA believes that such independent recording "unfairly and unnecessarily deprives" their lawyers, executives, and artists from future revenues. In an unrecorded telephone interview, Hilary B. Rosen, President and CEO of RIAA, said that "we believe our industry has a right to expect that our ideas for new compositions will not be stolen or usurped by some fool kid getting the idea first. Remember, Elisha Gray, an established expert in electronic media, was unfairly deprived of profits from the invention of the telephone simply because Alexander Graham Bell, an amateur, got to the patent office a few minutes sooner. It's foolish to think that someone without experience or affiliation with the recording industry could come up with a creatively written song and have the right to profit from it when it sells in the millions. It's unfair to RIAA members to expect them to sit back and idly watch the money fly past into the pockets of independent artists."
When asked about the possibility of independent artists distributing their works through free channels such as KaZaa and independent websites, Rosen commented, "we have undercover agents who may be paying them a *cough* visit."
Asked about future legislation that the RIAA may introduce, Rosen added, "we understand that some churches and other houses of worship sanction musical performances without demanding royalties. Accordingly, we are investigating this to make sure RIAA's rights and potential profits are not infringed in any way."
EDITOR'S NOTE: The above interview was not recorded because the RIAA demandes that royalties be paid for all recorded telephone conversations, especially if they are encoded in mp3 format and distributed via the Internet.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.