More on Kazaa and Brilliant Digital Spyware

Vertigo01 writes: "There is an interesting article from CNN.com on the current state of the Kazaa controversy, and Brilliant Digital's plans for the future. Interesting quotes from the article include a statement saying that 'Altnet's seeded software [will be] awakened some time in May' and that 'Brilliant is negotiating with music labels and movie studios to market their material as well. The files will be copy-protected in some way, using Microsoft's digital rights management encryption technology.'"

Comments

Re:Spyware is bad, but...

[drsoran]

considering the fact that most people use kazaa to illegally download music, which does (!) harm musicians, using your spare CPU-cycles and bandwidth to pay these guys isn't even that ridiculous.

Thinking that ANY of the money raised through these trojans will go into the hands of musicians is ridiculous thinking on your part. It will either go to bolster "Brilliant's" income or go into the RIAA anti-piracy coffers. The day people turn over and decide that letting someone install a trojan onto their system in return for using a supposedly legitimate piece of software is the day we should just pull the plug. The Internet is broken. Kick the commercial noobs off.

Re:How is this not terrorism???

[Troed]

So a virus that pops up a dialog with a 12 page EULA is ok?

I'm sure someone on Slashdot can put one out for trial in the wild :)

Re:*** DANGER DANGER DANGER WILL ROBINSON ***

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

Let me start out by saying that I despise the idea of the government forcing me to pay for content I may or may not consume and in fact wish no one else consumed, at least on a scale large enough to keep the RIAA afloat (a few pennies to PBS, NPR, NEA, eh...I don't like it, but it's not enough money to complain about.)

But disregarding that opinion for a bit, I must still oppose paying copywright holders instead of creators.

However, sometimes the creator is unable to pursue the commercial use of the work. In this case, the creator can sell his ownership of the absolute rights of the work to a new party.

Yes, but we must ask ourselves WHY this is the case. It used to be because in individuals weren't capable of distributing their music to the masses for sale. With the internet, this is no longer the case--anyone can put their mp3s on the internet. However, individuals have little ability to make a consumers receiving the mp3 conditional on their paying--so they still must sell their rights to the recording industry.

But if this potential legislation passes, it is an admision by the RIAA that it is no longer capable of providing this service on it's own! It can't stop consumers from getting songs without paying, it needs the government to bail it out. So it isn't needed to help distribute music, and it's no longer capable of restricting the distribution of music. Therefore the Recording Industry serves no purpose whatsoever, and the faster their employees are on the streets looking for jobs that actually accomplish something, the more productive our economy will become. However, if this pointless industry is kept alive by governmental fiat, like such piracy compensation legislation, it will be a great waste and a greater injustice.

In other words, because the ONLY remaining purpose of the RIAA members existance is to make people pay artists, the screwing over of artists MUST be addressed in piracy compensation legislation.

Of course, this all assumes that procedes to the copywright holders will be based on the number of times their song is downloaded--more likely, the government will just say "well, AOL Time Warner made X dollars before napster from record sales, so we can just assume they would make X inflation-adjusted dollars today if it were not for piracy". Thus, whether or not AOLTW actually produces more likable music, they still get paid, and THEN we'll see how much we can really screw over those artists!

This prospect offends me not merely because it is corporate welfare, but because it gives control of Art itself to an unelected, unappointed few.

So, both of you are right. The sentence he flagged was pretty evil, but everything else in the idea sucks too.

And the award for worst analogy goes to...

[ThaReetLad]

Matt Oppenheim, RIAA senior vice president of business and legal affairs.

"If I rob a bank, the fact that I haven't been arrested yet doesn't mean I haven't done something wrong," Oppenheim says. "Sharman Networks should take no comfort in the fact they haven't been sued yet."

Perhaps a better analogy would be...

Person A works in a bank. Person B is a friend of person A and says "Can you give me some of the money from your bank". Person A says "sure, come on over". So person B drives to the bank and person A gives him some cash from the vault.
The FBI decides that a theft has taken place and imprisons the Ford motor company for making the vehicle used by person B to drive to the bank.