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RIAA to Sue You Now
An anonymous reader writes "MSNBC reports that apparently the music industry feels so satisfied with going after file swapping software makers that they want to sue the pants off the file swappers themselves. Of course, you'll need to be a big fish with lots of illegal music to get their attention." This is what they should have done in the first place- go after the people who are actually doing it instead of making P2P seemingly
illegal.
Instead, the industry has focused on lawsuits against for-profit piracy outfits
I expect this from MSNBC, but this is a WSJ article.
Nope, no sig
One of the things people have been claiming to be a disadvantage to gnutella is now showing itself as an advantage. People cannot browse your file lists in gnutella and thus cannot see how many illegal files you are swapping. They only learn of what files you have when they do a specific search for them.
"Filing suits against individual users is complicated. Entertainment companies frequently hire services that specialize in tracking copyrighted material online. But to get the name of an individual user, they have to send a subpoena to that person's Internet-service provider. Even for the ISP, linking the Internet address to a name can be complex. Moreover, it's hard to verify which person was logged on to an Internet connection at a given time."
So in other words to find most individual users they will have to invest time+money, yeah this'll fly for an association thats primary concern is profit!!
crazy dynamite monkey
This isn't about an industry that is feeling smug and self-assured...This is a LAST DITCH EFFORT to assert their right to exist. And in the long run, I don't think its going to work.
RIP RIAA -- 2006
"The United States versus KazaaLite User "SpankyPants27", AKA 64.123.25.14"
::.. check out some Cell Phone Reviews
Say I own the "rights" to 500 songs. I bought the CD, tape, payed for an individual mp3 download, whatever.
/tunes shared out.
How is offering them over napster servers any more illegal then what a library does? If user X downloads them, and keeps them permanently, or sells them, or otherwise violates HIS local copyright statutes, I don't see how that's my fault for simplying for having
Years from now, law students are going to have to remember the names of groundbreaking cases that formed the latest incarnation of IP law...
RIAA v. l33t d0Wn104d3r
RIAA v. i oWnz j00
RIAA v. cr4pfl00d3r
Can't wait to see how those textbooks handle it...
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
The RIAA has tried (successfully) to paint P2P networks as festering cesspools of piracy and other sorts of illegal activity. I think this is part of the reason P2P networking has not been used to come up with more innovative technologies. Also, independent artists -- who could benefit immensely from distributing their music through P2P instead of through recording companies -- have been reluctant to embrace P2P as a truly new way of doing business.
So this might be good. Granted, the RIAA won't _stop_ prosecuting P2P networks, but at least they'll be shifting some of the blame to the people who actually use these networks for illegal activity.
But it won't help them. People like free music, and they'll fight tooth and nail when you try to take it away from them. Imagine the public backlash they'll have when they trace some huge fileswapper, have the Feds bust down their doors, only to find that their suspect is a 15-year-old whose father works at a university and whose mother is a nurse. They'll have to arrest someone, and no matter who they do, they'll be setting themselves up for negative publicity. Online file-sharers will be galvanized to the "cause" of free music, and the RIAA's troubles will continue to pile up.
Companies like the RIAA and the MPAA are going to go out of business. Period. When people have the ability to make an infinite number of copies of your product, at virtually no cost, you can't make money anymore. It's as simple as that.
Use of object has absolutely nothing to do with the legality of that object. If it did, scissors would be illegal because you could kill someone with 'em. Rather stupid, I know, but I'd rather not see P2P die out because it's being used for piracy NOW and the system itself is found illegal rather then down the road when networks like these might actually be productive.
Can they leagally go after the people with legitamate MP3s who happen to make them available on the internet or those who illegally download them?
To better explain: if I leave my doors unlocked and someone steals my CDs I may be a moron for not locking my doors, but I certainly didn't commit a crime (the thief did).
Also, if User A has a Old97s CD and legit MP3 copies of the disc on his machine and I also own the same Old97s CD and download his copies (instead of burning my own) did either of us break a law?
I am sorta hazy over both issues.
We've now reached the endgame... When the whole music industry comits mass suicide like Metallica did when filing suit against 300,000 of it's own fans.
I've been waiting for this to happen, as this will push things to a final resolution.
BTW, Why can I buy a movie that has been out for 3-4 months for $15-16 on DVD, with extra features, etc, but a 20 year old album costs more than that? I can buy DVD's of older movies for around $10.
Yet, DVD sales boom. The best anti-piracy protection is reasonable prices. So long as the RIAA engages in illegal, anti-competitive practices (the FTC found them guilty of CD price fixing again), I say they deserve whatever happens to them.
It's a Mexican standoff... Pirates will pirate from P2P networks, the RIAA won't obey the law.
If it can be heard, it can be ripped. If it can be ripped, it can be traded. No amount of lawyering can change this, and indeed, the music industry will only become an even greater villian to the average Joe by the attempt.
Sell CD's for $10. Watch the sales rise. Quit wasting $millions bribing stations to play songs they will play anyway. Watch profits rise...
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
But many music executives, watching revenue sag as home compact-disc copying has soared, feel that they have little choice if they are to save their business. World-wide music sales dropped 5% last year, while global sales of compact-disc albums declined for the first time since CDs were launched in 1983. So far this year, U.S. music sales are down steeply from a sluggish 2001.
/., but I have to say it again. If they would just realize that people WANT digital music that they can download and throw onto a custom CD/MP3 player/etc, then they could give this up now! Yes, there'd still be copying of CDs, and all that, but it would drop. If they have lost revenue because of filesharing, not their own lack of quality, then setting up a system where we can buy ONE song would do wonders for their revenues. They are, bluntly, idiots.
Or could it be because people are getting fed up with the latest crap from Britnay Spears and N'sync? I have bought 5 albums in as many years. They were all albums that I knew I would enjoy, start to finish (w/ maybe 1 or 2 songs as exceptions). I didn't buy the same album over, and over, and over again.
Hell, I download a few songs that I want to hear, but there's no way I'm paying for an album for one song. I know that argument has long been shouted loudly and proudly from our ranks here on
On a side note, RE: the article, I don't see how they can get someone beyond reasonable doubt. It's a simple matter to give the HD a complete wipe (7 times over, 1s and 0s) and users can just claim that they downloaded a song from Kazaa to hear it before they bought an album. The only way they could truly "get" someone is if the user had perpetually downloaded copies of the same song.
Anyway, that's my $.02
Later.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your 0.02, so :P
Um, not anymore...
They sued Napster, it pushed people to true P2P networks like Gnutella. Now they go after the people on the networks, won't this just push people to something like Freenet? (Freenet masks users and files so it'd be more difficult to target specific people for trading specific things)
Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
It's a stupid idea, the second one big distributor gets busted, 3 more are going to pop up, it'll take an enourmous amount of resources to even make a dent in the supply of songs. In the meantime, they'll have to raise the prices of CDs, yet again, to finance this legal effort, and people will even buy less CDs and download more music.
They're just digging themselves deeper into their graves. They're approach should be through sound economics, not through evil lawyers (that's another issue all together!).
Give us an incentive to buy your CDs and we'll buy it. Stop blatently rip us off!
> How is offering them over napster servers any more illegal then what a library does?
Here and there in the midst of all this discussion, I've occasionally run across an estimate from the publishing industry that each book sold is read on the average four times. One of their interests is cutting this number down and making people pay for the books they read.
Now, I have very few books that I've ever loaded out to anyone, and I doubt if any of my couple hundred books have been read by three other people. So where could all these extra readers be coming from?
Right. Libraries. The publishing industry doesn't make much of a public fuss of it, but one of the goals that they are starting to consider reachable is using the growing copyright restrictions to shut down public libraries. In the eyes of publishers, libraries are nothing but open copyright violations. All the arguments being made about "piracy" apply directly to libraries.
In the 1800's, the development of the public library system was one of the really significant advances in public education. We are seeing an attempt to end this social experiment, and to restrict education to those who can afford the publishers' price.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
1. Notified of lawsuit against you
2. Drive to local music store
3. Buy CDs of songs downloaded
4. Show up to court
5. Laugh in face of RIAA as they accuse you of stealing what you already own
6. Yawn.
I just graduated from college with a liberal arts degree. If they want massive amounts of money from me, they're just going to have to get in line and wait their turn.
"Of course, you'll need to be a big fish with lots of illegal music to get their attention."
Gee, I dunno where the RIAA would get any ideas about how much disk space that we use to store our MP3's.
Note to RIAA: "If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane."
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
SeeUsueMe
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
Just because I can't afford all those CDs, should I not be allowed to listent to music? [...] And don't tell me to listen to the radio, because radio sucks ass.
Well... um... yes. If you don't want to listen to free music, and you don't want to (or can't) pay for music, then you don't get any music. That how a capitalist market economy works.
I guess you could make the case that being deprived of music is a moral wrong, and try to get somebody with money to back a charity for people who can't afford music. A church would probably be willing to help you out, but I'm not sure you'd care for their selection.
Your other option is to hum.
Or you could look at it from another viewpoint, that of the record industry. See, the record industry has been bitching and moaning about this big problem that they created due to their own greed. It's called payola. They have to pay so that the music they sell gets exposure to listeners around the country and around the world. They have been doing this forever. First they were paying radio stations to play their songs. Then when that was outlawed, they started paying some middleman to pay radio stations to play their songs. Now they're complaining that it's just too expensive and that the government should put a stop to it, boo hoo hoo. Oh yeah, and in the meantime, they are going to shut down napster and kazaa and anyone else that gets their music out to listeners around the world. Can't have that happening, can we.
Now you might say that people who download songs will just listen to them on their computer and never pay for the CD, but I don't think there's any evidence that that happens on a wide enough scale to really have that much of an impact, and there is a decent amount of evidence that seems to say that Napster and others have had a positive impact on CD sales. I think that what the record industry should really do is work on their public relations problem. Get rid of Rosen and put an artist or several artists in her spot. They don't even have to be Britney-class superstars, and in fact, they shouldn't be. They should represent the vast majority of artists that make something around minimum wage or a little better. Kind of like the artistic middle class. They could help to persuade people that artists really need their support in order to continue to make the music that the fans love. That could probably make a huge impact on people. But if they really want to make it work, then they should knock off all the damn price-fixing crap and lower the price of CDs. They should probably stick an MSRP price on each CD too, so that stores couldn't just double the price without facing some serious questions. I think that the statement to fans would be that the record industry wants to do good by them and help them find the music they like and help artists to make a good living. Oh, and they would save all those millions that they've been flushing down the payola toilet too. Now most of us can't imagine this happening in a million years, but if anyone has the muscle to get a message out to fans, it's the record industry.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer